Close Encounters 13
by chezchuckles
Summary: CE 13: Quantum of Solace. In the aftermath of Spy Castle's super bug, Beckett goes on a hunt for the regimen. Meanwhile, Castle furthers his investigation into Bracken.
1. Chapter 1

**Close Encounters 13: Quantum of Solace**

* * *

**for Cartographical**

let it be another year of spy

* * *

Kate Beckett/Castle/Rodgers - whatever she called herself on any given day - pressed her cheek to her husband's shoulder and closed her eyes in the bright flicker of the fireplace. Sasha yawned at her feet and settled in, her body heavy against Kate's shins. Castle stroked his fingers over her arm and up to her neck, brushing aside her hair.

"Fire's going down," he said into the room. "Want me to go get more wood?"

Everyone groaned at his lame joke; Esposito threw a pillow at him and it bounced off his chest and landed on top of Sasha. Kate sat up straight to get out of the line of fire and yanked the pillow of the dog, thwacked Castle in the stomach with it as he laughed.

The little cabin was crowded with their friends - their family - but they were all booing him for it.

"What?" he said. "Too soon?"

"You ass," she muttered, elbowing his ribs. He grunted and hunched over, and she knew he was faking, that the insertion point for the chest tube was long healed, but she couldn't help pressing her fingers to the place.

"Kidding," he whispered, kissing the side of her face quickly.

"Don't kid about your life," she murmured, kissing back anyway. He was still grinning, and she pushed a smile to her face to ease his mind. "You think you're so funny."

"It's a recent talent I've acquired," he said, looking demure. He even fluttered his lashes and she had to laugh, caught her father chuckling at them past the line of Castle's shoulder.

Her dad, even laughing at them, looked tired. Pushed a little past his limits, anti-social man that he was. Kate brushed off Castle's roving fingers and stood up reluctantly, stretching and nudging the dog off her feet. Carrie stood as well and called to Bo.

"We should get going. Long drive."

"Oh, but you could stay the night," Kate insisted. "It's dark out already. The extra bedroom-"

"Yeah, you shouldn't risk it," Esposito said kindly. Too kindly. Kate shot him a look and he gave her a _lay off_ back.

Oh, really? Espo and Carrie?

Castle might have something to say about that.

He came to stand at her side just then, reached out to grip Carrie's elbow. "Carrie, please stay. Kate and I want you guys to celebrate with us."

"Celebrate not being dead?" she laughed, shaking her head.

"That and the new year," Castle chuckled. "All of us alive for the new year, aren't we?"

"I know. And I've had fun tonight. But you know me. I'm a homebody. I want my own bed."

Kate glanced to her father, saw the way his hands laid over his knees, the way he studied the group heading for the door. She loved their extended family, but she knew these past few days had been a little much for her father.

Carrie and her father were a lot alike, actually. If Carrie wanted to go, then... Kate nudged Castle to keep his mouth shut and he glanced back at her in surprise.

"Let me walk you to your truck," Esposito said. "In fact, I'm going that way. I can drive behind you for most of it, make sure you make it safely."

Esposito. Really? After that blow-up with Lanie, Kate had expected them to work it out eventually. And Carrie while wasn't really that much older, yeah, she knew better than to fall in love with another CIA agent.

Carrie was giving Javier the once-over, and Mitchell came to her rescue, clapping Espo on the back. "Javi, I think Carrie's used to it. She'll make it fine. Mark married a country girl."

Carrie laughed and patted Esposito's shoulder like she was consoling him for the loss. "He's right. I'll be fine. Thank you though. That was... oddly sweet."

"Uh-oh," Castle whispered in Kate's ear. "The last time you said that to me, we ended up having sex on the Ugly Couch."

She elbowed him away, ignoring the flash of lust contained in that memory, and stepped forward to give Carrie a huge hug, kissing her cheek as she squeezed. "Love you, Care. Be safe and don't let Bo try to sit in your lap."

Carrie squeezed back and chuckled. "That some kind of code?"

Kate laughed, a little breathless at the unexpected reference to Espo, and she shook her head. "No. Really, no. I just know that Bo likes hanging his head out the window - that's all."

"Sorry, Carrie. I apologize for my wife - Kate has a dirty mouth," Castle chuckled, shooting her an eyebrow-wriggling look.

Her father choked on something that sounded like laughter, and Kate's cheeks flamed. She shoved his shoulder but he was solid as a rock and barely moved. Kate turned back to Carrie, ignoring her suddenly _so_ funny husband. "Have a good night."

"Night, you guys. Rick, stay away from the lake."

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, but he hugged her as well, said good-bye. Esposito ended up escorting her outside, Mitchell tagging along like they were in some kind of competition, but Kate knew it was mostly friendly. And Carrie encouraged it in her unsubtle, smiling way.

With those three gone, her father's cabin seemed suddenly bigger, though a little more lonely. Jim stood and locked the door after their friends, reached down to pet Sasha. "I'm going to turn in. Lock up the kitchen door after you've taken out the dog?"

"Yeah, we will, Dad," Kate answered.

Her father disappeared into the back bedroom and Kate turned to her husband, drew her arms around him. He was smiling at her, his eyes reflecting the light from the fire, a flame blue.

"Hey, there, super spy," she murmured. "Dirty mouth, huh?"

"A dirty, dirty mouth that I absolutely - thoroughly - enjoy." His smile grew wider and he dipped his head to kiss her. Contrary to his words, the kiss was sweet at first, soft, like he expected someone to interrupt them just as they'd been interrupted all weekend. She pressed her fingers into the corded muscles at his back, felt the power in him.

Ever since she'd used up practically all the regimen to save his life, every touch was like this. Starkly powerful. Electric. She'd forgotten what it felt like to be consumed by him, so long had it been since he'd been truly at peak performance.

_Oh_, this was... definitely peak performance.

His mouth opened and sought hers; she gave in and stroked her tongue across his, let him play. His hands pressed into her hips, slid to her ass and hauled her closer. She groaned at the feel of him, the wide press of his body around hers, against hers, the way he filled her up just with the work of a kiss.

Had she been so bad off after Russia that she'd forgotten what a healthy Rick Castle was capable of doing to her? Was their every encounter so overwhelming to her PTSD-self that she'd been duped into thinking he was everything he should have been?

No, this - this was her super spy.

He broke from her mouth with a groan and pressed his forehead to hers, cradling her face in his hands. "Come outside with me."

"Are you kidding me?" she groaned.

"I want to walk down to the lake."

"You are not funny." She gripped his shirt and pulled herself closer. "I don't know what that regimen does to you - makes you think you're so funny-"

"Not a joke," he whispered, trailing his mouth down her throat and making her groan. She had to keep it under control; her father was just down the hallway.

She swallowed hard and rubbed her cheek against his for the feel of his scruff at her skin. "Why? Why the lake?"

"I want to hold your hand in the moonlight and breathe in the stars."

"You are so melodramatic," she complained, but when she opened her eyes, he was gorgeous. So achingly beautiful. And alive. How could she say no?

"We'll take Sasha outside with us," he gave her.

"Fine. But you better be planning on feeling me up out there or else this so isn't worth it," she muttered.

"Ever practical," he smiled.

She narrowed her eyes at him but she let him push her towards the kitchen door and the stars outside.

* * *

Rick held her hand and tugged her along after him, squeezing to keep the blood flowing in her fingertips. She complained of being cold with every step but when he got her down the gently sloping hill to the edge of the lake and they stood on the dock, her breath left her.

And he knew why - it was gorgeous. The stars were over-bright in the thin winter air and the sky was so black that every light was made all the more intense. The water lapped softly at the wood pylons of the dock and reflected the vibrant beaming face of the moon like a pathway straight to the Milky Way.

Kate came up at his back and buried her cheek at his shoulder, tunneling into him, and he turned his head to look at her.

"It's beautiful," she sighed.

"Yeah," he echoed, but he only had eyes for her and the starshine reflected in her face.

"Turn around, you goofball," she grumbled, but her lips were smiling. Still he reached back and gripped her thigh as he did, feeling her shiver at his back. She didn't have on a coat, but neither did he.

"You warm?"

"Enough," she grumbled. "Mostly ticked that you're just standing there, not a bit cold. It's disgusting. It's below freezing out here."

He laughed and glanced back at her again, but she lifted her hand and pressed two fingers to his cheek, turned him back to the sky. Her arms threaded around his, hanging on, and he pressed his thumb into the top of her thigh in response.

She was humming. He liked the sound of it, couldn't remember hearing her ever sing for him before. He stayed still, kept his eyes on the horizon of stars before them, and soon her softly-hummed words threaded between the bright pinpoints of light, slipped in so that he knew the sense of them rather than the sound.

It was beautiful. Everything was knitting back together again, his mind clear once more and his body doing what it should - and that seemed to have given Kate a measure of intensity he hadn't seen in her since... the first year they'd met. When she'd been pouring over her mother's case and drowning in it.

He flinched at the thought. But just because she was intense about _him_ didn't mean she was drowning. They could be intense about each other, right?

She breathed out softly at his back and splayed her palms at his stomach, her nose pressing into his shoulder blade. Castle gave up trying to be good and tugged her around to his chest, drawing her against him and wrapping his arms around her.

"I can't see the lake like this," she complained.

Castle laughed and turned them around, putting his back to it, and she hummed again, tilting her cheek down to his shoulder. He watched the woods past her and saw Sasha come skulking through the trees, slinking low like the wolf. She paused when she saw his eyes on her, and then the wolf shivered off of her, molting, and she came bounding towards them, all joyful dog once more.

Kate oofed when Sasha collided into the back of her knees but Castle kept her standing, laughing in her ear. She pinched his hip and bent down to brush her fingers through the dog's ruff, scratching at her ears, grabbing her collar.

"You both are crazy. It's freezing out here."

"Should've made you get your coat."

"Such a mother hen," she murmured, as if confiding a secret to the dog. She lifted back to him but pressed her palm against his chest. "Ready to go back inside? Made peace with the lake?"

"I have. Have you?"

She shrugged though her eyes were dark, still pools. "Wait till summer. Maybe then it won't make me want to wrap you in blankets and smother you with disproportionate concern."

He chuckled but the truth of it was close to the surface. She still worried, still hung on to that moment and the hospital room and his not breathing. He was working on erasing it though; he was going to make it disappear.

"Let's not. Not go back inside," he said suddenly. "Let's drive down to the nearest open gas station and get ice cream."

"It's freezing."

"You can get hot chocolate," he said. "That gas station on the way up here, the one with the slushee machine, they've got vanilla-something cappuccino. Always smells good."

"Gas station coffee. That's what you're offering me."

"Yes, come on. Let's take the dog and pile in the car and go."

She tilted her head at him, but he could see she was tempted. That the spontaneity was appealing. Just like going for a run in the middle of the night or getting Chinese after he'd had a panic attack, doing something they weren't supposed to do had a thrill to it, a sense of illicit and undercover _normalcy_.

Normal felt naughty. How pathetic was that?

"Okay," she said finally. Her voice was fast like she didn't want to change her mind. "Take me for gas station coffee."

He grinned and reached down for her hand, snagged her fingers. "Want your coat?"

"You'll just have to keep me warm."

Castle laughed and called for the dog, started hustling her towards the Rover. Gas station coffee and maybe he'd convince her to get a frozen Snickers so he could watch her lips around that slow-melting, hard-shell chocolate, share it maybe, have fun together.

Before she could part ways with him at the front of their car, he leaned over and kissed her loudly on the cheek.

"Love you," she said, her fingers curling at his ear and keeping him there. "I love you, Rick. You know that, right?"

"Of course you do. No one else would accept gas station coffee for me."

She laughed and pushed his head away, and then she got into the car with the dog.

* * *

"Sasha. Bark. Bark for me, puppy." Castle teased the treat over her head but all Sasha did was come up on her haunches and open her mouth, tail wagging. He gave up on getting the dog to speak and gave her the little green bone; Sasha's tail went wild and she crunched on it, a wolf-like grin spreading her muzzle.

"She's a quiet wolf, not a barking dog," Kate said, nudging his hand away. She curled her fingers around the back of his neck like she did sometimes to Sasha, like she would pick him up by the scruff. "Leave poor Sasha alone."

Castle tossed another green bone towards the puppy and she showed her teeth - her way of thanking him - before she took her treasure and started back towards the woods bordering the gas station.

"No," Kate called out after her. "Sasha. Here. To me, puppy. Come back."

Sasha paused with one paw raised in the air, her head tilted towards them.

"Sorry, girl," Castle sighed. "In the dark, you look too much like a wolf. Back in the Rover. For your own safety. Come on."

Sasha whined and her tail dropped, but she slinked back to them. Castle opened the car door and the dog jumped up inside, moved towards the very back to eat her bone in peace. Castle shut the door after her and leaned against it, watching Kate sip her gas station coffee.

"Good?"

She nodded. "Actually. Pretty good. Stargazing with you at the Kwik Stop is kinda middle school, but it does it for me."

He laughed and reached out to draw his arm around her neck, drag her against him. She came, holding the cup away from them to keep it from sloshing, and he kissed the side of her mouth.

"Doing it since middle school, huh, Beckett?"

She grunted and elbowed him in the side. "You've got a lecherous mind, you dirty old man."

"It's a conditioned response, really," he murmured, trailing his mouth to her ear. "You bring it out in me. After all these years."

"I'm pretty sure you were a dirty old man before we ever met, baby."

He laughed, felt the way the tickle of his breath made her skin shiver. He sucked lightly at her earlobe, and her free hand came to his hip, fingers tunneling under his shirt. "I was a machine, Beckett - you said it. And a machine can't be a dirty old man."

"Right, because you were a total monk on every single one of those spy missions."

"I didn't say _that_," he grinned. "But when I think back over my decades of service, you're the only woman that comes to mind. Only one I think about, only one I want."

She hummed something appreciative against his neck and he felt her shift into him, that coffee cup getting pressed against his chest as she moved closer.

"You know all the right words, don't you, super spy?"

"I like to think so," he whispered. She smelled like hot chocolate and vanilla cappuccino; he bet she'd taste like it too. Castle ducked his head and claimed her mouth, stroking his tongue inside to find out.

Kate moaned and fisted her hand in his shirt, their hips bumping, coffee sloshing. She was tasting him now, apparently liking the snickers ice cream bar he'd downed in two bites, because she kept running her tongue around his like she wanted more.

He grunted when she pushed him back against the Land Rover, felt his back hit the door handle and then her body hit him. He gripped her ass with a tight squeezed, flattened out his palms to slip them into the back pockets of her jeans. She moaned and rocked against him, their close encounter flaring hotly into need.

She wasn't playing around any more; neither was he. Ever since he'd nearly died, it went like this for them.

He could taste her desperation on his tongue, under that too-sweet vanilla, and it made him anxious to drive it out of her mind, out of her body, made him want to grind it out of her.

So she would know - always know - he would never leave her.

And then Sasha barked, a short and brisk bark that made them jump apart.

Castle saw the owner of the gas station over Kate's shoulder, watching them curiously with his hands on his hips, keys dangling from his fingers.

The man cleared his throat. "I gotta tell the damn high school kids every Friday night. Didn't think I'd have to come out here and tell _you_. Katie Beckett - don't think I won't tell your father - no matter how old you are now."

"Shit," Kate moaned, dropping her forehead into Castle's neck.

Castle laughed, tried to appear serious. "Yes, sir. But - uh - you do know we're married. She's my wife. It's okay."

"It's okay to molest your wife in public for all to see?"

"Oh, fuck," Kate gasped, and her grip tightened on him in a _good_ way, so that a hot spike of curiosity went through him.

"No, sir. You're right. I apologize. We'll molest each other in the car now."

"_Castle_," she hissed.

"You do that, son. Now get on out of here. I'm closing up for the night."

Castle held off his laughter until the proprietor went back inside, and then he chuckled and opened the front door for Kate. She smacked his shoulder and then climbed inside, giving him a warning finger.

"No more molesting, Rick Castle. Drive me home - to my dad's house - and be nice."

"You don't really want me to be nice now, do you, Katie Beckett?" He grinned and got into the Rover with her, shutting the door and starting the ignition.

She slid her hand over his thigh and he figured that was answer enough.

Her body came in close even as he moved to put on his seatbelt, her teeth nipping _hard_ at his jaw. "Don't call me Katie. _You_, Rick Castle, are _not_ my daddy."

* * *

They drove home the next day so they could report to work on Monday morning without trouble. Sasha seemed eager for her own space again, which Kate could understand, and when they finally unlocked the door and came inside with their bag, the place opened up in welcome.

Sasha ran off, heading for the kitchen to check that her food dishes were still there probably, or maybe down to the panic room in the basement. They hadn't been able to break her of that habit, despite getting locked in a few times.

Castle pressed his hand to Kate's back and nudged her forward, and Kate stepped through the entry and dropped her phone on the table by the elephant.

"We have all afternoon, all evening," he said from behind her. She turned and he was dumping their bag on the landing of the stairs, just tossing it right over the railing. She huffed at him and narrowed her eyes.

"Castle. We've been gone for nearly two weeks and before that..."

"What are you saying?" His eyes narrowed back at hers. She could tell he was figuring it out as he spoke. "You're gonna make me clean, aren't you?"

She nodded to their bag. "That's at least one load of laundry. I had to go buy you new clothes, super spy. Your pants were falling off your hips."

"That's embarrassing," he muttered. And she saw that his neck flushed with it.

She chuckled and reached out to squeeze his arm. "Laundry."

"Is that my job?"

"Bathrooms need to be cleaned but I don't want you touching stuff. In case."

"In case?" he asked, head swiveling to her with a frown.

She shrugged. "Germs. I want to get everything wiped down before you use it."

He gave her an exaggerated sigh but she could tell that it bothered him - that her concern needled at him because he didn't want her worried. She knew that. She just didn't know how to explain that this was how it worked - family. She got to be concerned and do for him because he was her husband and she loved him.

"Castle, just start the laundry, okay?"

"Yeah," he sighed. "Fine. I thought we'd do more fun things."

"Give me an hour and we can do all kinds of fun things," she said, lifting on her toes to skim her lips at his temple. Even in her high-heeled boots, he was tall today. He couldn't possibly have grown; he just felt bigger to her, stronger, and she was grateful for it.

"Panic room fun things?" he rumbled, a vein of clever delight running through his voice. His fingers caught in the belt loop of her jeans and she touched her palm to the midnight black of his t-shirt. T-shirt in winter, the crazy super spy.

"Panic room fun," she promised. "An hour to clean and then any way you want me."

"Any way? Holy hell, Beckett," he grumbled. "We're gonna have some _fun_."

"Get started on the laundry."


	2. Chapter 2

**Close Encounters 13**

* * *

"So you're what?" Ryan joked. "Superman?"

"Yes," Castle said flatly. He sat down at the cafeteria table with Beckett's man - and his asset - and he nudged Ry's tray. "Good eats?"

"I can't believe I'm training with a bunch of twenty year olds," Ryan said, shaking his head in disgust. "But yeah. It's good here."

"I'm springing you a week early," Castle told him. "We have a few sensitive items that I need you on, and whatever you're missing - computer-skills-wise - I'm confident that Malone can teach you at the Office."

"You're springing me from the joint?"

Castle lifted an eyebrow, but he smiled. "You could say. Finish your lunch and then I'll take you back with me."

"Anything you can tell me about right now?"

"Our number one enemy," Castle mused.

"I sorta figure there are two of those?" Ryan said. He hadn't been able to come this weekend to the cabin because of training and Castle knew Kate had missed him. He seemed the little brother of their group.

"Two?" Castle asked. "Ah. My father, I see. Yes, well, he's at a listening post off the coast of Tunisia. On my radar - always. He's never getting to Beckett again."

Ryan ducked his head and nodded, already shoveling food into his mouth. Castle had picked up a full plate as well, mashed potatoes, meatloaf, green beans. The simple kind of stuff that he'd learned to cook for himself and Kate but which he'd quickly gotten away from. She wasn't a meat and potatoes girl, and he had more fun with complicated recipes. So he enjoyed his throwback lunch as a reminder of their early days, eating in silence with Ryan.

They finished at the same time and took their trays to the window, set them on the counter. Ryan glanced down the hall towards the classrooms. "I gotta get my stuff."

"Already gotten," Castle assured him.

"In a hurry?"

"Somewhat. We've got a couple good leads and I'm not letting him slip through our fingers this time. He goes down for this - and soon. We're closing the net."

"Secret Service?" Ryan said quietly, pushing open the door of the campus center. The winter sunlight was fierce this morning, brighter than usual. Ryan hunched his shoulders though and stepped faster. "You got my coat by any chance?"

"Yeah, sorry. One of your instructors gave me everything."

"Naw, it's fine. Just. Cold out here."

Castle nodded, but he couldn't really feel it. Maybe there was something to Kate's tease about being super, because when he thought back, that long weekend at the lake before he fell in, he really _had _been feeling the cold. It'd been brutal, leaching into his bones, his fingers aching with it.

But not now, and it was definitely colder now in the middle of February than it had been then. He didn't know what to think about that. He didn't want it to be the regimen - not if it made that big a difference to his body chemistry.

He had no idea what his father had done to him and he didn't want it coming back to haunt them.

He remote-unlocked the Land Rover and slid behind the wheel, dragged Ryan's coat from the back seat and threw it at him. Ryan chuckled and slipped it on as Castle started the engine.

"So?" Ryan prompted.

"Computer tracking needs to be done on the account numbers we got from Bout. You been read in on that one?"

"Yeah, vaguely. I think Beckett told me some stuff but not all."

"I'll give you the details as we drive," Castle said. "And you can tell me what you know about Beckett's mother's case."

"I thought she told you?" Ryan said, clearly surprised by the request.

"Yeah, she did," he answered, throwing their friend a look. He could ask this of Ryan; he couldn't of Esposito. Ryan understood that there were lines no one should go past, even if Beckett had a whole army behind her. "She told me her side of it. I want to know what you've seen. How... how she is about that case."

"Surely you know," Ryan said slowly. Anxiety pinched his forehead and he rubbed his hands together.

Castle turned up the heater and pulled into traffic, heading for the interstate and the city once more. "I know," he agreed. "But I need to know that I'm not the only one who sees what it does to her. I need... I need your help keeping an eye on her - just in case."

"You think she'd really go after Bracken alone?" Ryan said, already shaking his head. "No. She's not - that wouldn't... okay, so she met him alone and made that deal. I see where you're headed with this. But Beckett's sense of justice - of what's right and wrong - that's unshakeable. Unassailable. You can't be questioning that."

"She shot a man's knee and nearly killed him," he said in response.

"For _you_."

"So?"

"Castle. Come on. You can't tell me you don't see the difference."

"For me versus for her mother's case? I _saw_ what happened to her last time we dove into this. You can't tell me you didn't."

"Yeah, but it's _you_. And her mother's case... no. She's not like that. But where you're concerned, you're right - she needs watching. There's nothing she wouldn't do. After you died, man..."

"I know," he gritted out, clenching the wheel harder. "I know. I saw... I know."

"So don't tell me you don't get it. It's different when it's you, Castle. But her mother's case - she wants justice. She wants Bracken to _pay_ for what he did, and for everyone to know about it. Because that was her mother's way. So that's how she'll do it."

Castle rubbed his thumb over the steering wheel and frowned at the road. "Still." He'd seen her lately. The more they talked about Bracken, the more work they did, the more things built, the cagier and darker she got.

"Still," Ryan sighed. "I'll be your narc."

He huffed a breath and glanced at Ryan's profile. "I'm putting you in a bad spot, I know."

"If you really think Beckett needs looking after, then fine. I'll be that guy. But I'm telling you, Bracken's not the one that causes her to go off the deep end. Not any more."

Ryan had said it before, but Castle couldn't help remembering how it'd been that first year. Finding her kneeling on the floor in front of those colored index cards, frantically trying to put the pieces together, desperate to break through. With Coonan, Castle had chased after her and had to literally fight her off, handcuff her to his bed to keep her from throwing herself into danger.

When Castle had faked his death, whatever that grief had done to her... he knew how to combat that. One rule: _Don't die._ Simple. And he was damn well going to make sure he'd be here for her; he would fight tooth and nail for this life. Nothing was going to keep him from her.

But Bracken. Her mother's case. She needed this closed once and for all, and the fact that he'd made her that promise time after time and still Bracken was on the loose? Unacceptable.

This was it. The end of the line. She'd made a terse concession once that they'd end it together if it came down to it. They'd lock themselves in the panic room and hash out every detail and then he'd emerge and end Bracken's reign with a bullet.

"Castle," Ryan said from the passenger seat.

"Yeah."

"I don't like being your snitch. But Beckett deserves a chance to put this to rest. I'll do whatever it takes."

He nodded, throat closing up at the man's loyalty. "Thank you," he rasped.

* * *

She was amused. Her nickname for Castle seemed to have caught on around the Office and he did not look pleased. Of course, only Esposito - and Beckett - said it to his face, but he heard the murmurs. And Mitchell was delighted to confirm the rumor.

"This is your fault," he growled at her. Kate only smiled and brushed his forearm as she passed him in the hall. She had a full schedule this week and no time to stop. He didn't touch her and she didn't make a further comment; they kept on going.

There was a lot of work. Castle had assigned her one of the open operations still on their slate - the thing in Warsaw that Mason had jetted off to without their approval. She was sweet-talking him every chance she could get and with the time difference - Warsaw was six hours ahead - she was often up at two or three in the morning to catch Mason before he could get going.

Today she'd had to liaise with McCord again - the AG was putting together the finishing touches on the case against Fesker for her former physical therapist's death. Fesker hadn't talked under questioning, but Beckett wanted to get him alone. In a different country. With professionals who knew how to make contract killers talk.

She definitely didn't want Castle doing it though. They needed an unbiased interrogator. Unblemished results. And as much as it sickened her to be setting up the parameters for this 'interview', she knew it had to be her.

Anyone else would be heading for extreme rendition and those notorious black sites. But not now. Not with Castle in charge, and not with Beckett overseeing it. She was going to have to be careful with this one, and having McCord as an accountability partner was good as well.

At least, she hoped McCord was interested in keeping the CIA accountable. Sometimes McCord said things that made Beckett cringe. Things about giving in, about_ how the world works._

Kate refused to believe that civility and justice and law wouldn't win in the end. Terrorism flourished under extraordinary rendition circumstances. Violence beget violence. She'd been convinced early on that it wasn't the way - which is why Fesker was being handled carefully, slowly, and why Beckett was running herself ragged over it.

When she got to the command center, she saw Ryan installed at his work station. He'd done well so far, despite getting yanked from training a week early, and even though he was only a few days into it, she was proud of him.

She headed towards the two boys sitting side by side and dragged a chair up between them, sat down. "Hey, guys."

"Beckett," Esposito said, warmth in his voice. He'd become so... cuddly? warm at least, since becoming an agent. "We're just finishing up. You want to come for a beer?"

"No," she said shortly. "Busy. But thanks. Ry, how's it going so far?"

"You're busy?" he asked instead. "With what? I don't think we're getting any further on this today. We gotta wait for the banks to open."

She nodded. "I know. I'm working something else."

"Another line?"

She peered at Ryan intently. "You know I can't tell you, Kev."

He flushed and shot Esposito a look that she couldn't interpret. "Sorry," he muttered. "No, I know."

She studied him but couldn't figure out what was up with him. "Anyway. Rain check on the beer? Castle and I were thinking of heading to that bar he loves - the Haunt or something? - on Friday."

"Is Friday ever really a Friday around here?" Esposito snorted. "Cause that's not my rotation. I won't be able to drink with you guys."

"Oh, sorry," she apologized with a wince. She'd forgotten that Esposito was a weekender. He was on call for them. "Look, come but don't drink?"

"That's lame, Beckett."

She shrugged. "Up to you."

"Next Tuesday is my Friday," he muttered. "But is anyone willing to come and not drink for _me_? No."

She laughed and patted his shoulder in sympathy. "We'll try it. See what happens. So long as you come with us Friday."

"Fine, fine. Whatever."

Kate grinned and stood once more. "Good. Okay, got five hundred more things to do before this day is over. See you guys later."

She grabbed her phone from the station and started checking alerts again - Castle still hadn't removed her from the updates list since he'd recovered. She knew he was pushing more onto her plate so that she had less opportunity for overseas missions. But she could handle that - it was their plan after all, dial down the work, give their personal lives a chance to flourish.

When she got to the door, she realized that Ryan was watching her still and she gave a little wave of her fingers, puzzled by his observation.

Whatever. She had to call McCord again. The woman was dragging her heels.

* * *

The work week had taken its toll. Beckett looked faded by the time Friday rolled around, and he knew it was partially his fault. He'd piled the work on them both as a means of keeping her head well and truly occupied with fundamental, tangible things. If she was working the case against Fesker, then she'd feel like they had forward movement on her mother's case as well, right? Most of that was overseeing a work already in progress, and it required hours he didn't have, so it was an ideal fit.

He needed to prove to her that his promises were good; he needed her to know she could trust that he would be fine, he'd get it done, save the day, no matter what happened.

For her - he could do anything. Super or not.

"Go change," he told her, pushing on her hip as they walked in the door.

She grimaced and shook her head. "I've - got a meeting. One last. It's at seven tonight. There was no other time."

He sighed. "I thought we were going to the Old Haunt with everyone?"

"Yeah, I know, baby. I'll be there later." She was stepping out of her heels at least, cracking her toes against the wooden floor of the entry.

"What meeting?" he asked, hoped it sounded nonchalant. Ryan hadn't exactly been reporting in like he'd wanted, but when he had cornered the guy this morning, it'd only been because there was nothing to report. He was wary of that.

"More of this stuff with Fesker," she sighed.

"Do you want me to-"

"No, no," she said hurriedly. Her arms came around his waist and she rose up on her toes to brush her mouth against his. "No, but you can make me dinner before I leave though."

"Yeah, I can do that," he murmured. He was more interested in the silk of her lips, the soft warmth of her breath against his mouth. He took another kiss, seeking slowly, pressing into her. She shifted closer and he slid his knee between hers, hands at her back to hold her against him.

When their kiss parted ways, he relished those little pants of breath and the rise and fall of their chests out of time, the rub of her fingers against his side where the chest tube had been. He lowered his chin and nuzzled into the fall of hair at her neck, blew out along her skin so that she shivered.

"Dinner," he reminded himself. "How fast?"

"I need to leave in an hour."

"I can do that," he promised. He wished he could do a little more, but she didn't want to change out of her work clothes. "Grab a glass of wine and keep me company in the kitchen."

"Yes, sir," she hummed, releasing him with a smile.

* * *

It wasn't about Fesker.

She'd feel guilty about lying to him but she wasn't legally allowed to be here. She stood three blocks down from the private rehab facility in the Bronx and scraped a hand through her hair as the taxi pulled away. Not the most circumspect route, but she was pressed for time.

She was still on suspension - no CIA-issued weapon - for the shooting. And if she'd told Castle she wanted to visit Dr Saber, he'd be liable for that as well. As it was, she was breaking a host of laws and skirting more than just censure for her actions tonight.

But she had no other options. No other leads.

One vial of regimen remained with the doctors at Stone Farm, but it had taken five to save his life.

She had asked Mitchell for clearance to review Castle's old missions, especially those entirely orchestrated and arranged by Black, but she hadn't gotten it yet. She wanted to crack open all the old places - she knew the stories, but she wanted the details. Saber had said there were caches all over the world and she figured if she could backtrack Castle's tour of duty over the years, maybe she could find a pattern.

But it was a shot in the dark and if she could ask Saber himself, she'd have a starting place. He knew something, he knew _more_, and if she could use his hatred of Black, use Black's betrayal against him, then she might be able to do this.

She walked quickly down the block and kept an eye out for NSA tails - or worse. She didn't want to lead anyone to her only and best source of information on the regimen, but she also didn't want to have to call Castle for back-up.

He'd be on his way to the Old Haunt by now, meeting up with their strange blend of family. Mitchell, Malone, Ryan and Jenny, Esposito, Carrie. She hoped Castle would have a few fingers of scotch and maybe a beer, unwind from the week before she met up there later tonight.

She'd have to tell him eventually. And if Saber pitched a fit over her showing up, then maybe sooner than she liked.

Castle had capitulated to the regimen because of _her_, because she couldn't handle losing him, because in the back of his mind, she knew, he still held the image of her drowning in the bathtub, bloodied and drunk and stupid.

But this was how she handled it. Action. This was how she banished the idea of him dying of some super bug right in front of her, and Kate helpless to stop it. She would find the regimen he needed to survive and she'd keep it safe for him, until he might need it, until the next common cold mutated into a super-virus and wreaked havoc on his system.

She had no doubt there would come a time when he needed it. But good luck trying to convince the Man of Steel that Kryptonite would come for him again. He felt invincible once more and he wasn't interested in his father's twisted plans.

Well. Kate was. She wanted to know everything.

She had to find the regimen.

* * *

Castle would never be convinced that doing this many vodka shots was a good idea. He knew his threshold and he knew he could handle two more, but Kate hadn't appeared yet and he wasn't about to be smashed when he had to walk her home later tonight.

Plus, it was entirely too much fun to be sober when Kate Beckett was not.

Ryan leaned in around Jenny, who also wasn't drinking for obvious reasons. Not too obvious though; she looked good, flush maybe, that glow people ascribed to pregnant women, but she rolled her eyes as Kevin downed another shot.

Castle was impressed with Ryan's tolerance. He was Irish, but stereotypes didn't always translate. Castle had always found that drinking with a man would out his true character, and so far, Ryan was every bit as golden as Kate trusted.

Castle clapped Ry hard on the back and grinned. "Have another."

Jenny gave him a death glare, and he wondered how bad the hangover would be, but Ryan downed another and went back to arguing with Esposito. Something about having his back during a fist-fight with a rapper's entourage. An old NYPD case.

He liked hearing their stories, enjoyed more the way Carrie single-handedly denied Espo every time he got close. He knew Lanie was coming later, after her shift, but he didn't know what had happened between them, if it was truly over. Though he had no trouble enjoying the show.

Castle checked the door again, searching for the shine of Kate's hair in the golden lights, the sharp and svelte profile of her face under the amber. She was no longer quite so angular, no longer showed all of her bone structure at first glance now that her health was back. But she wasn't here yet, and Carrie was nudging his shoulder with hers.

"You doing all right?"

"Just looking for Kate," he admitted.

"She's fine, you know. For the first time in a year, she doesn't look hunted."

"Shit," he muttered, dropping his head into his hands. Carrie sighed and rubbed his back, squeezed his shoulder.

"Drink up, Richard. She's doing good."

He stole one of Ryan's shots because his scotch was gone, ignored the man's protest as he knocked it back. The waitress was skimming their group and he held up two fingers, indicated refills for himself and Ryan.

"Did Kate talk to you about it?" he asked Carrie.

"When I saw you last weekend at the cabin - yeah. A little. She's more worried about you than herself. That was hell on her."

"Yeah," he said, rubbing his hand down his face. The vodka was shining in his body now, making things easier. "I know it was."

"You two," she sighed. "Worst codependent people I've ever met."

"Except for maybe you and Mark," he shot back.

Her smile eased across her face, lips so clever. Yeah, he saw it - knew exactly why Mark had fallen so hard for her. Kate had that same look. Power and mastery. "Could be true."

"Codependent, huh?"

"What happens to you, happens to her." Carrie flicked his ear in the same way that Kate always did and then nodded towards the door. "There she is."

He grinned as he turned around, saw her shaking out her coat, unthreading her scarf just inside the door. She looked serious but not unhappy, professional and fierce as always.

What happened to him, happened to her.

"Thanks, Care," he murmured as he stood up.

Kate spotted them in the corner and smiled; he saw now that it was snowing outside - spitting really - just beyond the windows, that the tiny flakes had already melted in her hair like a diadem, shining golden in the light and crowning his wife.

She came towards him through the crowded bar, her eyes melting down into chocolate happiness, and when she arrived at their table, her arm slid around his waist.

"Looks like you've got a good head start," she murmured at his jaw. Her kiss was cool with winter air, pushed goose bumps along his neck.

"I had a couple vodka shots. A glass of scotch. You need to catch up."

She half-turned from him and he obediently took her coat, sliding it down her shoulders to reveal the beautiful jade of her sweater. She sat down as he put her coat on the chair behind her, realized it was his own chair she'd claimed.

He laughed and pressed his hands to her shoulders, kissed the corner of her mouth as he leaned over her. "I'll go to the bar and get you something. Preferences?"

"Martini. Shaken-"

"You're incorrigible," he murmured with a grin. But he moved off to get her drunk.

Drink. A drink.

A few drinks.


	3. Chapter 3

**Close Encounters**

* * *

She was absurdly grateful for the group surrounding them at the Old Haunt, for the arrival of Lanie right behind her which put off whatever questions Castle might have had about the 'meeting' she'd been at. When he came back to the table, the other empty chair had been taken by the medical examiner, who only batted her eyes at Castle and ordered a martini.

"Just like the one in your hand, baby doll." She snagged Kate's drink with a deft maneuver and shot Kate a quelling look. "I need it more than you do."

Kate hadn't really wanted a martini anyway; she'd been teasing Castle. She gave up the drink easily and stood as well, gesturing Castle to sit back down. His fresh glass of scotch was waiting at her spot - she'd taken one smooth swallow - and she pushed it towards him.

"I'll ask for a pitcher and get something else. You stay." She let her fingers trail over his shoulder and ruffled his hair when he wasn't looking, made him growl at her. Distracted by teasing from the table, he let her go without another comment.

At the bar, she snagged their waitress and asked for another round and a couple more glasses of scotch. She wasn't looking to get Castle drunk, but happy was good. She felt the need for that bold burn of single malt, the way it seized her lungs like a fist and cleared everything right up.

She couldn't forget, no. She didn't want to forget. She needed to remember the way Dr Saber had snarled at her, the mockery that twisted his face. He wanted nothing to do with her, but he hated Black more.

She didn't want Castle to end up like that; she didn't want herself to end up like that - so obsessed with Black that it ate them up. Black colored everything in Saber's life and Beckett wanted more for her family. More.

But they needed the regimen. What had been done was done. No going back, no way to change it now. Saber could be broken, she was sure, given time. It hadn't ended pretty, but she'd taken her moment on the subway, no tears, just a long hard look at herself and what she'd done.

She didn't know that shooting him hadn't been the wrong thing. Saber thought of her the same way Black did - a woman of no use to the CIA, and worse, dangerous to the good male agents who risked their lives. He was in enforced detox due to the surgery and rehab, and she'd seen the trembling in his hands, the agitation and confusion, the sharp burst of excitement when she'd told him that Castle had recovered after receiving the injections. His mood had been unstable, his skin pale and sweating, and even though her father's sobering process hadn't been that severe, she knew what she was looking at.

A wrecked man, desperate for a drink.

And for revenge. But on _all_ of them, not just Black. He hadn't wanted to give up his secrets, if he even had them.

But she'd work on him. Saber had all but demanded she come back next week, his haughtiness and pride the only thing that kept him from asking. She'd be back and she'd find out what he knew.

This time she wouldn't shoot him, but she wasn't above making it agony on them both.

The waitress handed her two fresh glasses of scotch and Kate came back to the present, flushed when she realized she'd been hanging out by the bar. She followed the woman back to their table, smiling as cheers erupted for the new pitcher, and she sank gratefully into the seat Castle had wedged between his own and Lanie's.

He took a scotch from her but didn't drink, settled it at her place instead. His arm came around the back of the chair, warm against the chill wind from the door opening and closing. She canted towards him, laid her hand on his thigh under the table because she knew he liked it when she kept in touch with him. She eyed the two glasses in front of her and sighed.

What the hell. She could use a second.

And maybe a third.

* * *

The night was dripping with lights, neon and car brakes and office floors, bakeries and coffeehouses and the ends of burning cigarettes. He wrapped her hand in his and pulled his shoulders in against the cold, felt the yawn starting in his chest before it broke out.

She laughed and slid around him, her body like sinuous heat, warming him up, and Castle grinned back at her, loved the way she got so silly, so easily amused. Her laughter was a bright thing in the city's darkness, a lure calling him forward, and he couldn't help the way his hands reached for her hips, wanting part of her.

She stumbled and he caught her, his fault anyway, and she hummed something and hung on to him by his tie, dragging him after her, keeping him just as close as he wanted to be anyway. They'd said good night to Lanie and Esposito back at the front door of the bar, the only other two who'd stayed so late, and Castle was sure that Javier would be taking his CIA calls from Lanie's place.

Carrie had gone home hours ago, Mitchell following after. He'd had a brief conversation with Beckett that Castle hadn't been privy to, something about old case files. Castle had no idea what that was about, but Mitch didn't seem concerned, so he wasn't either. Not much anyway.

"Stop thinking," Kate laughed at him. Her hips nudged his. "Remember when I took you mechanical bull riding?"

He grunted and narrowed his eyes at her - tried to anyway. "Hell, yeah, I remember."

"You've got that look on your face now. A little bit of sex, a lot of deviant planning. What're you planning, baby?"

He grinned back at her. "Wasn't even thinking about the mechanical bull. But we could go. If you wanted."

"I got my own bull," she said, her leer not even sexy, just clumsily adorable. "I can ride all night."

"Got that right," he growled, feeding her ridiculous lines. She was leaning back and kissing him, breathing hotly into his mouth, and then she tugged him hard by his tie.

"Get me home, Castle. I'm a little too drunk to be out on the street much longer."

"I got your back," he said easily. "You can walk, can't you?"

"You're not sloppy?"

"Sloppy drunk?" he laughed. She was giving him that not-quite-sober narrow-eyed look, the one that kept slipping because she'd thought of something else or his laughter had distracted her. "No, sweetheart, not sloppy."

"But you're aware?"

He sobered as he realized she was concerned about their safety on the street. "I'm aware."

"You're still super?" she said, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. Her eyebrows went up in horror and then - when he started to speak - she clapped her other hand over his mouth, halted them in the middle of the sidewalk.

She stared at him, eyes wide, lashes trembling, something both terrible and comic in her gaze.

He touched his tongue to her palm over his mouth and tasted peanuts and beer, the crease of her lifeline. She shivered and he caught her by her hips, pulled her gently towards the shelter of a closed bank, ducking them into the covered doorway. When he drew her hand down from his mouth, he kissed her fingertips.

"I'm aware. I won't let anything happen to you, Kate."

"Or you," she whispered, her hand dropping from her mouth and her body leaning into his. "Nothing happens to you. I'm not - I shouldn't have drunk so much."

"I'm super enough for the both of us," he said, nudging his nose into her forehead and kissing her. "Look, I'm not even cold, baby, and you're freezing."

She shivered again and drew in against him. "You have goose bumps," she sighed. Her fingers played at his neck and he realized he did. Had since they'd left the bar.

"It's only because you're touching me, love." He kissed her again, a reckless thing, trying to prove himself.

She bubbled up with a laugh, tilted her head back. "You got chills?"

"What?"

"They're multiplyin'?"

"Is that a song? Are you _singing_?" He laughed at her and she laughed back, gave a little shrug of her shoulders.

"It's from _Grease_." When he still looked clueless, she sighed. "Gotta educate you, baby. You've missed out."

"You gonna do the educating?"

"No one else better be educating you."

* * *

"It's electrifyin'," she whispered, her hips rocking back into his as the subway train went around the corner and flashed into darkness. The lights flickered once more and then went out again.

He breathed out at her nape, both of them standing in the uncrowded car, so close, everything brushing, her neck under his lips, the backs of her thighs to his knees, her fingers at his fingers, tangling.

"Touch me," she whispered. "We're alone."

He slipped his hand around her stomach and flirted with the line of her dress pants, nudged his fingertips under. He could feel the silk of her panties, the black thongs she'd pulled on in a hurry this morning, hopping on one leg because they'd overslept.

"Remember that first case when the Chinese agents came to your apartment and we had to ditch out the fire escape?" Castle spoke near her ear, letting the sway of the car bump them together. "We took the subway to my place."

"I remember," she murmured.

"I wanted to touch you like this."

"I might have broken your fingers if you had," she chuckled. She smelled like blueberry martinis and Lanie's perfume, but under all of that was the rich scent of her skin - something like almond milk and honeysuckle, something deep and blooming. Earthy and alive.

"It'd have been worth it," he sighed. "Though I doubt you'd have been fast enough to break my fingers."

"Oh." She sounded artless, buzzed, her body vibrating within the framework of his. He dared to slide his fingers lower, touching close, and at that moment the train lights zapped back on, flaring white.

She stiffened and he blocked her body from the flash of the platform as the subway slowed, inched his hand out of her pants. She shivered and twisted around, pushed herself into him like she could barely take it.

"Okay?" he murmured. The doors opened to no one, a platform mostly empty, and the low hiss of the public address system crackled on and off again.

"Okay," she nodded. "You make me feel electric."

"That's not a line from 'Grease' is it?"

"It's electrifyin'," she repeated tonelessly. She shivered again and clutched at his tie; he hadn't changed out of his work clothes because she hadn't either. She really seemed to need that tie. "The line is electrifyin' - but this isn't lightning, Castle. This is a constant current running through my bones."

"Sorry?"

"It's the best feeling I've ever had."

He dropped his arm from around her in stunned disbelief but had to quickly embrace her again as the doors closed and the subway jerked away from the platform. She rocked, didn't even falter, moving easily with the motion.

She'd been born here; she'd grown up riding these subway lines, he knew, and it showed. Even buzzed, she was naturally graceful.

"Best feeling you've ever had?" he said lightly, tried to skip over what that did to his guts. His _soul_.

"When I touch you... it's a closed circuit."

"I love it when you nerd out on me," he grinned. But his smile felt tight; she was too truthful, too raw, too honest for him to play it off.

"Everything is connected like this," she went on. Her eyes were bright and sleepy and she ran her fingers along his sternum. He felt it too, the spark and startle of static. "Your mouth on mine and I just - all that power."

He nodded dumbly because he couldn't say she was wrong and he wouldn't deny that being with Kate - touching or not touching - was... He didn't know what to call it, but a closed circuit was as good as any.

They were electric.

"I can't lose you."

"You won't," he promised, nudging closer so their hips bumped and their foreheads as well. She sighed and her breath was sweet and sharp like her profile in the bar tonight when he'd first seen her arrive, and it kicked hard in his guts.

"Everything else seems so dull and flat without us, without our current crackling through me. Nothing is the same. It's not worth it if it's not us."

"Okay, okay," he gentled, drawing his hand up to cup her skull. "No more scotch for you, sweetheart. It makes you sad."

She sighed again and her lips twisted. "Oh, it does. It makes me sad. I'd forgotten that."

"The martinis were nice, though, weren't they?"

"Vodka makes me sleepy," she murmured.

He stroked his thumb along her cheekbone and tilted her head back to him in the harsh lights of the subway. Their stop was drawing close and he wished he hadn't encouraged her to drink so much. She wasn't drunk, but the sadness made him ache.

"You can sleep when we get home," he promised. "It'll be better in the morning."

"Oh, good idea. I need to be quiet."

"Quiet?" he chuckled. "You can keep talking. I just wish you weren't so sad."

"I need to stop talking," she said, shaking her head with a little grunt. "Stop saying so much. So many things. They're not supposed to come out."

"Like asking if I was still super?" he asked, curious about the sad, truthful Beckett.

"You are, you are," she said hastily, like she had to reassure him. "I know you are. All this electricity sparking up, right? Power." She drew her head back to give him a crooked grin. "Animal magnetism."

He smiled back slowly; he finally understood. The closed circuit, the power, the electricity - she meant _now_. Now they had it back because of the injections. The regimen. Because he was-

"My super spy," she murmured, her nose nuzzling in at his ear and her mouth open to kiss. "You wouldn't let anything happen to us."

"I wouldn't let anything happen to you, Kate," he promised again, wrapping his arms tighter around her and burying his face in her hair. Super or not.

"Us," she insisted. A sharp thing, like a plea, her body taut and trying to hold on to him. "Us, to us. Protect _us_."

"I am. I am. I promise you, I am."

The doors swished open at their stop, cold air rushing through the compartment, and he hustled her out, wanting only to get her home, break the cycle of sorrow that dragged at her.

No more scotch and vodka together. Sad and sleepy didn't go well. He'd work on making her happy again, seduce her a little, romance her. Whatever it was that weighed on her tonight, he wanted to banish it.

Castle kept her hand in his and headed for the escalators back up to the night-bright city lights.

* * *

"You gonna talk to me or what?" he murmured.

Kate roused in their bed, skin flushed with the last of love, and curled into his side to listen to his heartbeat. She'd found herself addicted to the sound, as if she needed the reminder.

"I took a pregnancy test last night," she admitted. Though it wasn't the thing that pressed heaviest on her, the thing that bruised. "It was negative."

"Why do you keeping doing it alone?" he sighed.

"I don't want both of us going through that," she said honestly. "I know it's keeping you out of the loop and it feels isolating to you. I know. I'm sorry. But I can't - I just have to do it. I have to know."

"Are you upset?"

"Not... no." She closed her eyes but felt his fingers trailing up her spine to spread her hair over her back. Her skin was cooling; his touch made her shiver. "Everything in its time, Rick. We're in the middle of a heavy caseload right now."

"Yeah."

"Are you upset?" she asked. His heart remained steady though.

"You didn't give me a chance to be," he sighed. "Nothing's changed."

"I'm sorry."

"Can you not to do it alone next time? I just - I want to be there."

"For nothing?"

"For you, Kate."

She felt the shame flush her cheeks and turned her nose into his chest. His hand came heavy to the back of her skull and he scratched through her scalp. He didn't feel condemning, just tired, and she thought maybe that was worse.

"Okay," she mumbled, putting her ear to his heart again. "Okay, Castle. I'm sorry."

He turned on his side and wrapped his other arm around her then, his heat stinging her skin. Still so strong, so solid against her. Super. The idea of him losing it again, of that slow decline into collapsed lungs and weakness and drowning - she couldn't.

No. She refused to do this without him.

He sighed at her temple and nudged in for a soft kiss. "You cold?"

"Hm?"

"Let me pull the covers up," he whispered. She shivered when he untangled them, moving away, and the bleakness of the moon outside seemed to press hard against the window panes, wanting inside.

And then Castle's heat came back with the long line of his body next to hers and the cocoon of the sheets and blanket and comforter and he drew up at her back, his knee sliding between hers. And it felt good, it felt like a wall between her and that despairing moon.

"You okay?" he murmured in her ear.

"I'm okay."

"You said it, Kate. Everything in its time."

She just wanted to make sure they _had_ the time.

* * *

Saturday morning was cool and clear when he woke, sunlight without filters, an endless blue sky. Omens of a better day. Castle turned in bed and brushed his hand over her shoulder, leaned in to press a kiss to her forehead.

She woke easily, like slipping into a pool, her eyes liquid and warm as she shifted closer to awareness.

"Want to go for a run?" he offered, voice raspy with sleep. She flinched but her fingers came up to press against his lips. His breath dampened her skin and she smiled, slow and pleased.

"Yeah."

"It's eight," he said. She nodded and her eyes stayed on his, like she'd woken from an upside down dream and now she was trying to be certain that everything was back in its place.

"Yeah, let's go for a run. Roosevelt Park? We could take Sasha with us."

"Sounds good." He drew his hand to hers over his mouth, his words reverberating still, and she smiled as she curled her fingers at his lips like a peculiar kiss. "Up and at 'em, Beckett."

She lifted in bed and drew her hand away, leaned in over him to dust her mouth against his. "Brush my teeth and put on workout clothes and I'm ready."

"Get going then," he smiled. She hummed something and made that cat-eyed face, content and pleased, even as she slid out of bed.

He watched her leave, body relaxed and easy in the morning, and then he got up to follow her.

* * *

Her sweat steamed as she entered the house, the dog exuberant and tumbling in behind her. Castle brought up the rear, shutting the door with a too-loud slam that made her turn. His shoulders were hunched in surprise.

"Don't know your own strength?" she laughed.

"Something like that." He turned back to look at the door like he really couldn't understand it, and she patted his shoulder, her nose drawing up at the sweat clinging to her fingers.

"Sasha." She called the dog to her side as she headed for the kitchen, set out clean water for their puppy. She shoveled a cup through the plastic bin of dog food and poured it into the dish, being sure to keep her fingers out of Sasha's way. She was a careful dog, but it was never a good idea to get between her and her food when she was excited.

"Want breakfast before shower or what?" Castle asked. He'd come into the kitchen and was pulling out a pan, clattering it against the stove.

"I'm going to shower," she said. "I want to eat clean."

"I'll make you something. Eggs?"

"One egg. With toast maybe. Light, Rick. Make it light, remember?"

"Yeah, I know. I will," he promised. He offered a kiss to her cheek as she passed him at the stove, and she leaned into it for a moment, despite the dampness of his t-shirt.

"You're good to me," she murmured, smiled at the way his eyes lit up at something so small. She scratched her nails at his nape like he was Sasha and he nudged her away.

"Go. Before I come after you."

* * *

After breakfast, it was just time spent together around the house. Kate was downstairs in the living room working on some kind of project while he messed around in the office upstairs, cleaning out old files and shredding them. He moved some assets into offshore accounts, rifled through his aliases to make sure they were still viable, and checked the whereabouts of some of his confident informants in Ireland. He liked to keep his hand in, even if his operations didn't include that struggle any longer.

He wondered if this was what normal people did. Puttering around on a Saturday. Taking the dog for a run. If they had a kid, how it would be different? He couldn't imagine _not_ being paranoid, not moving money around for easy access in case their cover was blown - in case their _lives_ were blown.

Now that was an interesting point. He needed to look into having documents made for a baby, a boy. A girl too, of course, because it wasn't like he had any say in it. And the kid over the years - shit. This was getting complicated. Maybe a couple of passports, and a few blanks in which he could insert the appropriately aged photograph when it came time.

If it came time. He didn't want to have to break cover and run, never wanted his son to live a life like that. Kate - he knew - would be fine. She'd probably, on some level, enjoy it as much as he did.

Well, and what rules said they had to have a normal family too? If they were chased back home to New York, why couldn't they all hide out in Rome? That gorgeous villa in Cyprus? The safe house in Paris? Even Copenhagen had friendly places available to them if they needed it.

His son would have an international life, and maybe that would make for a better man, a man of character, a man who would be sympathetic to the plight of the world.

Who said they couldn't raise their children exactly as they wanted to?

He needed documents, papers, passports. He needed birth certificates and a significant amount of cash squirreled away. Right now they had access, but if they were blown, then he'd have no way of getting to those resources.

So he had to prepare for it now. All the possibilities. His son or his daughter, a life overseas or in hiding.

And there was Black. He didn't know how his father would react, didn't know what would happen there.

Castle swallowed hard and rubbed a hand down his face.

Yeah, he needed to get on top of this now. Before they got pregnant.


	4. Chapter 4

**Close Encounters 13**

* * *

Kate found herself spread out with an actual map of the world, marking off locations in black sharpie. Those places Black had sent Castle on his various missions. She figured that in every place in which Castle had been severely injured, there had been a lab nearby with regimen at hand.

He'd been shot in Marrakesh. There'd been an incident in Ireland, as well as jumping out of a plane over the English Channel while wounded. Nearly getting his hand cut off... she couldn't remember specifically. Pirates?

There would be more. He had a hundred scars over his body, most of those faded and silver with age, and there were surely times while he'd served in the military and trained for the CIA. Stories she didn't know.

She was guessing, but they were educated guesses. She could rule out the oceans - Black would have needed a lab, a storage facility, and probably a couple of dead drops. He would've needed places he could access in an emergency - places easily gotten to by medivac chopper when Castle's life had been on the line. In Russia, Black had taken Castle to Turkey first and then on to Germany - she had to assume there were sources of regimen at one or both of those places.

Kate found scissors in a kitchen drawer and began cutting up the continents, put the countries that were likely targets near the top of the wooden table. She needed a timeline, something to establish the patterns. And the details of those stories he'd told her, what she could remember regarding when and where, how bad off he'd been, the level of surprise and gratitude she'd felt that he'd made it out alive.

Just as with his knife wound from Coonan, when she'd found his recovery to be exceptionally fast, blowing right past her expectations, those would be the times he'd been given high doses of the regimen. She needed to pinpoint those experiences and figure out what her likely suspects would be.

At the bar last night, Mitchell had told her he was still working on getting her clearance for those old case reports, but she realized now she didn't need clearance. All she had to do was _ask_.

Castle had never been able to keep secrets from her, and he liked sharing his stories, the things he'd been through and what he'd overcome to reach here and now. He liked to say that all his time on missions brought him to her, that the universe had conspired to bring them together.

Maybe it had.

She needed to go find Castle, and fill in the dots on his worldwide tour.

But when she stood up from the kitchen table and saw the whole thing spread out before her - the cut-up map and the pinpoints in black marker, the details scrawled in a tight hand on scraps of paper - she realized it was messy and obvious and too much. He was sensitive when it came to the regimen; she knew he didn't want to have to take it. It'd be better to clean this up and put it away somewhere, keep it behind closed doors.

She didn't want to remind him of how abnormal he was - not when all he wanted was a normal life with her.

So Kate collected everything together once more, shoved the leftover pieces of map down deep into the trash can, and she headed upstairs to find a place to put it out of sight.

* * *

Castle tugged her after him through the winter cold; she'd given him such a sly smirk when she'd put on her coat and Castle had only kept his thin sweater. "Why the sudden interest?" he laughed.

"You tell good stories," she said, a little shrug. Her fingers wriggled in his hand and he glanced over at her as they waited at the light.

They'd had to leave Sasha at home - she wouldn't be allowed inside the Italian restaurant for dinner - and he had to admit he missed the dog at their heel. She'd been so good in the park, obedient even to the leash that she hated, and then following them around all day, napping in the sun on the floor of the office with him or downstairs with Kate in the kitchen. Lunch had been all three of them on the Ugly Couch, slowly working the DVR clean, Kate and the dog both falling asleep on top of him.

Felt strange to be just the two of them now; it felt like he was forgetting something.

She nudged his thigh with their joined hands. "So?"

"Oh, right. Well, the scar at my chin was a training injury when I was six. It bled a lot and I had to get stitches, but it wasn't a big deal. The blade got too close to my face and I was too slow."

She sighed, that heavy sigh again when he brought up his childhood.

"Hey," he said, nudging her back. "It's fine."

"Where were you?" she asked. "I mean, you tell me these stories about your father and what it was like, but I just realized I have no idea where you grew up. Here? DC?"

"All over," he shrugged. "Military boarding school in Kansas for three years, a boarding school upstate, training camps in Kentucky, West Point, one that he only ever told me was an undisclosed location..."

"That's not funny," she muttered. But he was still grinning. He couldn't help it; he'd never thought about comparing notes on their childhoods, the ways they'd grown up.

"What about you?" he said. "Private school?"

"No," she said softly. "Public here in New York."

"Stuyvesant?"

"You have such high expectations for me," she chuckled. She was close to him as they walked towards Little Italy, soaking up his warmth probably. "Okay, I'll give but only if you give first."

"Kindergarten was one year at a boarding school outside of the city," he answered. "Fordham Dyce. Worst name ever, right?"

She murmured the name to herself and shook her head. "I had kindergarten at PS 87 all the way through fifth grade. It was nice. Easy, I guess. I loved my second grade teacher, Mrs Stacks. Her first name was Kate too, and it made me feel special. She'd take me aside during the day and have me help her grade papers."

"Aw, Katie was a teacher's pet?"

"Yeah," she flushed, narrowing her eyes at him. "After Fordham Dyce?"

"Let's see. I had a year of military school-"

"In first grade?"

"Oh, I guess it was more like a year and a half. After Christmas break, kindergarten still, I went to this school in Pine Beach, New Jersey. It was a crash course in my father's expectations."

"What does that mean?" She wound her arm through his and pushed him towards the door of their Italian place. He held it open for her and she proceeded him inside, but he lowered his voice and told her the rest of it.

"What my father was looking for from me. Training drills, no sir and yes sir, marksmanship, running laps for punishment. It's a Naval Academy and the boarding cadets were about fifty to a class - though in kindergarten? There were five of us. It's co-ed, too, which was different from the school Mother sent me to, and I remember having wrestling practice with a girl four times my size."

"Aw, were you a skinny little thing?"

He laughed and shook his head. "No, actually. Not in first grade. I was in kindergarten, but the training... you know. Grew out of it pretty quickly."

The tease fell out of her eyes and she leaned up to cup his cheek, kissed him hard before he had a chance to realize it was coming. "Get us a table, sweetheart."

"Yeah," he nodded. And then he turned around to ask the hostess to seat them.

It'd be different for his son. In fact, Castle wasn't even sure the kid would go to boarding school at all, not if they could manage it. Maybe Jim would step in and act as surrogate when he and Kate were on mission or undercover.

James wouldn't be on the regimen or in military schools, that was for damn sure.

* * *

Kate had a wealth of knowledge in her head now, details and facts and ideas running around after their dinner conversation and the walk back to their apartment. They took the longest route, of course - Castle was always too paranoid to let that slide - and by the time Kate got inside the house, she was itching to get it all down.

She needed a whiteboard like a fix.

"This is strange, isn't it?" Castle asked her. He was rubbing down the dog after her yawning greeting from the landing of the stairs. "Having all weekend to ourselves."

"It is strange," Kate admitted. "Nice?"

"That sounded like a question. Are you bored?"

She slid her eyes his way and he had the same look of cautious agreement that she knew was on her own face. She chuckled even as her cheeks heated, came in close to hook her arm around his neck. "Not bored. Just."

"Just," he muttered. _"Normal."_

"Not in a bad way," she promised. "Dinner was beautiful, Rick. Just talking, connecting like that."

"Yeah. I thought so too. I like... I like hanging out with you. Like normal people."

She stroked the nape of his neck, moved by the soft and vulnerable places within him. She wanted to assure him that they could be normal, that they would get there, that it would happen for him, but the words wouldn't come.

Sasha whined and nosed between them, breaking them apart, so Kate let her husband go and scratched the dog behind the ears. "Fine, fine. Be that way. Wait until there's a baby, you little mongrel."

Castle gave her a crooked grin and tangled his fingers in Sasha's collar. "I'll take her outside. Wear her out a little so she'll curl up with us on the couch."

"Then I'll go change," she said. "Put on pajamas. We're almost finished with the new episodes of your show."

"We could get that done tonight," he grinned. "Boring enough for ya?"

Kate winked at him as she headed up the stairs, heard him taking Sasha towards the kitchen door. Inside their bedroom, Kate shucked her clothes quickly, yanking pajama pants on, slithering into one of his black t-shirts. She padded quickly into the office and searched his desk for paper and a pen, needing to get everything down.

She'd shoved all her notes and the map into the closet of the empty bedroom where Sasha slept. She made her way back towards the spot, tugging open the closet door.

Castle had installed organizational shelving in this closet to hide the safe; it was so well done, the pieces so perfectly fit together, that even now she found it hard to pinpoint which panel hid the secret door. She tapped the wood and still, no sound changes, no difference. She had placed all of her materials in one of the cubbies, and she touched the others one at a time, searching.

She found the safe in the third one from the left, got her thumb hooked into the top corner and tugged. The panel flipped soundlessly and the safe's dial now came into view.

Kate grinned and shook her head, flipped it back. He was a crazy, paranoid bully of a spy, but he was also very, very good.

Super.

She just wanted to keep him that way.

Kate hurriedly jotted down additional notes to the rough timeline she'd begun, now filling in the earlier years - his schooling at the naval boarding academy, the time at West Point. Then there was the place where he'd won marksmanship ribbons and his father had burned them and expunged them from the school's record because they couldn't leave a trace of their existence. Though her heart was heavy listening to Castle's stories, she was also curiously light. Knowing him. That's what had done it. Being given those pieces of his life to carry, to fit together into something better, to see how together they were going to be different for their own children.

She had just made a note to ask him more about West Point when a terrific crash from outside shook the back wall of the closet.

She dropped everything, shoved the door shut, and raced for the stairs.

"Castle?"

The kitchen door slammed open like a gust of wind had caught it; she jumped the last four steps and vaulted herself towards the back door.

"I'm okay!" he suddenly shouted, appearing right in front of her so that she plowed into him. Kate gasped and fought to keep from falling; Castle hauled her upright. "Sorry. I came in to clean it up and-"

"Clean what?" she croaked. Her heart was beating like a cold, slimy thing in her throat. "What was that noise?"

"I - Sasha... we were playing," he explained. His face had fallen, eyes downcast.

She pushed past him and came to a halt at the back patio, saw the wreckage of their little garden strewn across the concrete. They'd brought most of the plants indoors, but a few had stayed out here, and the larger casters and planters had been left waiting like shells for the crabs. Now they were in pieces.

Kate spun around and saw Castle coming back outside with the broom and dust pan. "I didn't mean to-"

"Are you hurt?" she asked, throat constricting. She reached for him, brushed ceramic dust from his shoulders, along the back of his shirt. Her fingers caught a hole where a piece of one of the clay pots had poked through. "Castle, are you bleeding?"

"No. I don't know. It's fine. Sasha and I were wrestling and then I got a call from the Office and I don't think the dog realized and now she's cowering in the basement because she's ashamed-"

"You're bleeding, Castle," she said flatly. Her fingers skimmed down his shirt sleeve where bright spots had bloomed. "Here and here. Did you hit your head?'

"No, I don't know. Kate, will you please just go get the dog? She's down-"

"I heard you. I'm more concerned about you," she muttered, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair. Fine shards of pottery rained down and she sighed at him, skimming his scalp to check. "No broken skin. Did you fall on your elbows?"

"I didn't fall. Sasha plowed into me while I was on my haunches and knocked me back. Kate. I got this here. Can you please get the dog? I have to leave."

"Have to leave?" she asked, bewildered. His eyes were already set, that slate blue, removed from her.

"The Office. The thing with Mason. I need to go take care of it."

"What did he do?"

"He got caught, the idiot," Castle growled. "I need to go in tonight. Just for a little while. Will you _please_ go comfort the dog?"

She stepped back, pressed it down, deeper, harder. "Yes. Okay." Mason had gotten caught. She hoped... "You can get him out of Warsaw, can't you?"

"I'm going to do my best," he sighed.

"Leave this," she said, grabbing the broom from him. "I've got it. You bring Mason home."

"Mitchell's already on a flight out."

"Go, Castle," she insisted.

"Just.. get Sasha. I-"

"I've got it under control," she promised again. "Everything will be fine."

He winced and lifted his elbow, tugged his shirt down. Blood streaked the skin where he'd been cut, but Castle only picked a piece of pottery out of the wound and moved for the door.

Kate followed him inside and headed down for the basement to find the poor dog.

"Sasha," she called into the darkness, flipping on a dim light. "Sasha, puppy. It's not your fault. Come on up."

She found she had to hold onto the railing as she went down the stairs, found she was listening for signs of Castle leaving: the scrape of his keys as he pulled them off the ceramic elephant, the beep of the alarm being unarmed, the front door opening and closing again.

The alarm beeped again, the double beep of the alarm being set, and then Kate was alone.

Normal wasn't very fun.


	5. Chapter 5

**Close Encounters 13**

* * *

Castle had texted her when he'd arrived, but she'd gotten no more details about Mason other than what came through on her phone. The alerts were being kept to a minimum, reduce the chatter just in case, and Kate found herself wandering the house with the dog following her like a ghost.

Though, really, they were both doing the haunting.

Kate crossed her arms over her chest and turned to Sasha in the upstairs hallway. "Okay. We're done. Time to _do_ something. You with me, puppy?"

Sasha wagged her tail slowly, as if cautiously optimistic, and Kate led the way back to the empty bedroom. She opened the closet and gathered all of her materials, the map and her notes, the pen from his desk she'd thrown on a shelf when she'd hurried downstairs. She took everything and laid it out on the floor of the empty bedroom, the pale grey walls like physical reminders of what she was working towards.

And it wasn't that she wanted him to be normal. She _liked_ their life together - loved it. She just wanted him to survive it.

Kate eyed the gaps in her timeline, the blank spaces where he was entirely unaccounted for, and then she stood back and tried to gauge how much more she needed before she could start figuring out a pattern to all of this.

Saber would know some of it. And Dr King as well - he'd debriefed Castle as part of a team. Who else? Mitchell had been there, Carrie's Mark had been there for so much of it and his letters to his wife might have place names. She could ask, but she'd save that for a last resort. She didn't want to ask for the woman's last private moments with her dead husband.

In the meantime, she needed to do some research on what she had here - get the CIA Factbook out and know the lay of the land. Kate headed down the hall towards Castle's office, searched through his drawers until she found the secure laptop hidden in the bottom panel. She tucked it under her arm and then saw the stack of colored index cards in the junk drawer.

She grabbed those too, a sharpie marker, and some tape. Might as well go all out. She had the whole night to research and her only company was the dog.

When she got back to the empty room, Sasha was stepping gingerly around Kate's notes, looking lost.

"Sorry, puppy, I've invaded your space."

Where could she hang this out of the way?

Ah, inside the closet, on the door. Perfect. Kate settled on the floor to start delving into all the many points along her husband's timeline.

* * *

When Castle dragged his ass down the last block and found himself in front of his own front stoop, he could barely believe how damn grateful he was to be home.

He used the app on his phone to disengage the alarm, remote unlocked the door even as he climbed the steps. The entry was cool with winter's touch; the heater didn't manage to warm the bare wood floors here. He'd been thinking about redoing the ducts or maybe installing some heated tile, but he hadn't managed to stay at home long enough.

It was three in the morning but Mason was at least in holding with Polish Secret Services. When Mitchell arrived, it would be touch and go as far as official channels, but he couldn't blow any more good covers on Mason's stupid, hot-headed choices.

Castle had just started up the stairs when he saw Kate at the top, a pen and notepad in her hand, her hair scraped back from her face.

"Kate? It's three in the morning."

"Is Mason...?"

"He'll be all right. The idiot. Mitch will be there in three hours, and he'll take care of it on that end."

She nodded.

"Kate, why are you up, love?"

"Mason," she shrugged. "Couldn't sleep. You okay?"

"I'm fine," he waved her off. "Tired. Long day."

"Yeah, you coming to bed?"

"Shower first," he said. He lifted a hand to her notepad and pressed it down from her chest, saw it was the scratchpad they'd used a few days ago to brainstorm new ways to get to Bracken. Of course they'd shredded the pages they'd written on, but he wondered if that was what she'd been doing. "Bracken?"

Her eyes blanked. Eerily and perfectly neutral. "Yes."

He sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. "I need a shower before-"

"No, of course. Shower, love. It was only to pass the time."

"You could have gone to bed," he murmured, reaching out to take the pen and notepad from her. He drew her into his body, an embrace that somehow was more comforting for him than maybe it was for her. "I didn't think you'd stay up."

"Mason was in trouble and I don't know - maybe you'd need me. Time got away from me."

He didn't like that, and even more, he didn't like the reservation on her face, like she was carefully avoiding the one subject she knew she was supposed to be careful about - Bracken.

"This thing with Mason will be wrapped within the next few days, Kate. I promise. And even then, we won't divert resources from the leads Viktor Bout has given us-"

"You think that's what I'm worried about?" she said, jerking back a step. "Castle. That man has-" She bit off whatever she was going to say and shook her head. "Mason is family. Mason helped to save both our lives. We're fixing his mistakes and bringing him home."

He nodded, tightening his arm around her to draw her back to him. "Yes. Yeah. Good."

"Go shower, Rick. You smell like the Office."

He smiled into her temple and dragged his lips against her skin, but even though she was putting him off, he knew how to reach her. How to get to her. How to draw her back to him.

"Want to shower with me?" he murmured. He slipped his fingers in the waistband of her jeans and stroked at her hip.

She shivered and pressed closer. "Yeah," she rasped. Her nose nudged his and her breath skirted his cheek. "Kiss me already."

* * *

He should move. They were sitting upright in bed, tangled in each other after that last round, both of them a little breathless. He should really move so that her legs didn't cramp, hooked around his waist like this. But her head nestled into the curve of his neck, skins sealed with love, and he didn't want to move.

Her arms threaded around his waist, palms pressing low at his back, and her sigh stretched out across his chest, soft and sated.

"Am I hurting you?" he murmured.

"Not right now," she mumbled. Though her body was nestled against his, he couldn't help hearing the meaning laced under the words.

He wasn't hurting her now. But he had, he would - he hurt her when he left her in the dark. He hadn't meant to, he never meant to, but he saw he would. He was setting her up for it.

Castle brushed his lips along her temple and reached back to unhook her ankles. She made a noise of complaint, but he shifted her knees to his hips and lowered them both to the mattress again.

Kate sighed and laid over him, her heart only now beginning to slow. Castle scraped his fingers through the knot of her hair, massaging her scalp and arranging the long locks to one side.

"Feels good," she sighed.

"Want you to always feel good," he murmured.

"You do an excellent job of that," she chuckled. Her lips turned to his chest and kissed, fingers stroking along his skin, ripples of pleasure. "My super spy."

"Speaking of, I have that appointment with Boyd this coming Friday. Threkeld is flying in to see me. We'll know more then, right?"

Her fingers stopped moving.

"Right, Kate? They're looking into it. I'll get a clean bill of health and they'll keep studying that last vial of the regimen and we'll figure it out."

He felt the way her body contracted, her arms tucking in close, the stutter of her breath.

"Love," he whispered. "It'll be fine. I'm fine."

"But you... you're... one day..."

"What do you need from me to be okay?" he whispered, stroking her hair. He cupped his hand to her ear and kissed her forehead. "Anything, Kate, love. Anything."

"You'll tell me if you're feeling - if there are symptoms?"

"Symptoms?"

"I don't know," she mumbled. She unfurled her fingers at his pec and he kissed her again, stroking her hair down her back. "Like - you're never cold. You're a space heater, all the time. Right now, don't even have covers but I'm plenty warm lying over you."

"Why is that sexy?" he growled.

She caught a breath of laughter and he smiled, glad to hear it. Or feel it, rather, the sensation of her mirth at his chest.

"But needing a coat. That's a sign, huh?" he murmured.

She nodded against him, and he felt the seriousness of it.

"Okay," he promised. "The moment I realize I need a coat, I'll tell you." She was already going to worry about him; she thought she'd missed something when he'd gotten sick, she'd told him as much, and she was always going to feel like she should have done more. If he started feeling the winter wind, then fine. He could tell her.

"And."

"And? What else, Kate?"

"The other thing I noticed... I'd see it again. Your sleep."

"My sleep?" he murmured. His fingers caught in a tangle of her hair and he worked slowly through it, separating the strands until she spoke again.

"You're usually on alert all the time. It's part of you - part of your superness, I guess. Because I think when you're rundown, you sleep harder."

"I sleep harder." He had no idea what that meant; he got plenty sleep. She was the one with the bouts of insomnia, the one who only needed four or five hours.

"Remember at my father's cabin after I got you - after you were stabbed? I thought I'd go crazy trying to keep still. Every time I so much as turned over, you woke up."

"Oh," he murmured. "The last few years though..." Castle stared up at the ceiling, wondered if it was true. He hadn't been woken up by her in at least four years. "No, wait. In Rome. After everything in Russia, I didn't sleep hard. I-"

"Black also had you, administered and overlooked your medical care," she murmured. "Mitchell told me that it was the regimen he dosed you with. For your leg."

"Shit," he grunted. "Why the hell didn't I think of that?"

"The knife wound," she whispered. Her fingers slipped along the edge of his scar, pushed into the space where his back met the mattress. "Don't you remember how I kept pushing you to take it easy? To slow down? And then one day you're at the physical therapist and the stitches are gone and everything's fine."

"Oh," he murmured. How had he not seen it before? "That was - fast, I guess? Abnormal healing. And the leg. Probably every time I've been injured, it's been augmented by the regimen."

"I think so. The capacity of your blood cells to carry extra oxygen might be only one aspect of their... heightened nature."

"You've been thinking about this a lot," he sighed. He stopped trying to untangle her hair, laid his palm at the back of her neck. "Too much, love."

"How could it be too much?"

"You're stressed. And sad," he whispered. And not pregnant yet even though there'd been plenty of opportunities, even though she'd been given a clean bill of health after those iron infusions.

Of course, that could be _his_ fault. The regimen, who knew what else it was doing to him. Shit. He needed to have Boyd check him out when he went up there on Friday.

"I'm not sad," she said quietly.

"Tonight?"

"It wasn't really about that," she gave. Her body shifted over his and away, his skin felt suddenly cool in the lack of her. She touched his thigh with her fingers. "You have goose bumps."

"I'm not cold," he assured her. "It's you. Moving against me."

She gave a bright laugh, lifted her eyes to his. A little of that sorrow still lurked, but it wasn't as strong as it had been at the bar. She seemed to have found steady ground.

"But you'd tell me," she said then.

"Yes," he promised. "And you'd tell me, Kate. Right? If you thought - anything." He didn't want to bring Bracken's name into this, but she'd dwelled so long on his getting stabbed. He knew she carried guilt for it - she'd almost said _when I got you stabbed_ despite years of therapy. He knew Bracken had to be on her mind. She'd said her being said wasn't really about him, Castle.

It was about her mother's case. He knew that. He just wanted her to tell him.

"I'd tell you," she promised. "The moment... anything. If anything happens."

"Or even if you're just... overwhelmed by it. Okay?" He didn't want them to ever go back to how it'd been that first year, her desperation to solve her mother's case, the way she'd disappeared right in front of his eyes.

"I will. I promise," she insisted. "Of course. It's just as much you as it is me."

He wrapped his arms around her and took a deep breath, hoped that had done it. Moved them forward instead of back.

At least they could talk about it. At least they were communicating.

* * *

She had believed him when he'd said it was the dog's fault, believed that one of Sasha's ill-timed bursts of energetic roughhousing had caused the destruction on the back patio. The shattered pots and the mess of containers and dirt had been easy enough to clean up, no problem to later replace, and the poor puppy had been hard to soothe anyway.

But Kate couldn't help watching him that week, her eye on him, tallying the days in her head since he'd received the last infusion of whatever serum had been in those injections.

Boyd called while Castle was out of the Office running down some bank personnel records from 1998, correlating the time of her mother's shooting in January of '99 to a 150,000 dollar transaction they'd pinpointed with the unwilling help of Viktor Bout. Beckett picked up the extension because she recognized the number and she greeted Dr Boyd's quiet confusion with certainty.

"Were you calling about the tests coming up?" she prompted.

"Ah, yes. Threkeld will be coming in through Stone Farm, so we agreed that Agent Castle should just head up here that day."

"Instead of here in New York? Of course," she answered immediately. "Can you tell me what you've found?"

"Agent Beckett, it's all a lot of speculation. We don't even have a clear picture of the overall purpose - the intended targets of such medication. It's fascinating, isn't it?"

Not really.

"Yes, fascinating. Have you talked with Agent Castle about any... side effects?" she murmured. Kate glanced around the command center but no one was that close. "Have you found anything that might do more harm than good?"

"All of it might do more harm than good. Neither of us wanted to use this unknown substance - seemed a crap shoot - but you were right. We all know it saved his life."

"But I mean, long-term. He's been on this since he was five."

"We can't know," Boyd said carefully. "But we have anecdotal evidence and some short-term indicators. We have theories."

"His blood carries more oxygen," she said, wishing the man would just come out and say it - whatever it was. "And so his endurance is greater, impervious to temperature extremes... why does he lose it?"

"Obviously the regimen was more than just these injections. He's told us about copious other elements - the periodic stress tests indicate some monitoring of the heart and its condition under the regimen. We're breaking down the last vial of serum into its components, but some of those components aren't things we recognize."

"But you can't pinpoint why it doesn't last? He was fine for years..."

"But was he?" Boyd queried, eager, analytical. "You say that, yet I've heard stories from you both that indicate it's been a long, slow decline since he stopped the injections. Now, whatever other pills or vitamins or supplements came with it - those I'd love to get my hands on."

Kate swallowed hard and tried not to jump to her feet and pace the floor. "There are others- right. More than just the injections. I should have realized."

"Well, yes. There was space in those silver cases for a pill canister. Agent Castle told us he kept taking those because they didn't make him washed out like the injections. So perhaps the effect of those pills combined with the injections? Perhaps the high doses of vitamins, oils, herbal supplements... the list is endless, Agent Beckett. We have literally the whole world to choose from, and no idea what Agent Black might have been dabbling with. The combination of drugs is what created your super spy. A combination we don't have."

"Oh."

"Look, we're hoping that with another round of blood tests, an MRI, we might get a better picture. Threkeld had an idea that it has changed the shape of his brain, so we're going to look into that."

Kate pressed her hand against her eyes and swallowed. She wanted to ask if it affected his genetics, his chromosomes, if they had to worry about sterility, or blindness from too much oxygen, or his body just shutting down; she wanted to know if he would be tied to the regimen for life, if he needed those supplements, if this was going to kill them.

But none of that would come out of her mouth. She might fall apart if it did.

"I can't answer your questions without more information," Boyd sighed. "I'm sorry. You'll let him know about the tests? Fasting for twelve hours beforehand, Kate."

The call of her name nudged her out of the dark swirl of her thoughts. She lifted her head and kept her eyes grimly on her computer monitor. "All right. Fasting for twelve hours. I understand."

Boyd hung up and Kate dropped the receiver into the cradle, her heart weak in her chest.

More information.

Supplements.

Saber would know, surely. He'd wanted to play these manipulative mind games, struggling for power, and Beckett had nothing at all to lose.

She'd go to Saber.


	6. Chapter 6

**Close Encounters 13**

* * *

When Beckett entered the lobby of the treatment center where Saber was, her phone vibrated angrily in her jacket pocket. She checked the alerts and saw the message from Castle, debated whether or not to let it go for now. She paused before the bank of elevators and called him back instead of texting, her mind racing for a strong enough prevarication.

In the end, she had nothing. Just the dry taste of dust in her mouth when it came to outright lying to him.

"Ryan said you left right before I got back," he said in greeting. He sounded fine, calm enough, but she detected a thread of question underneath the warmth.

"I did."

"Following up on something? I thought I had it covered."

Her mind slipped right off the edge of that, unsure where she was, where he was either, what was going on. For the first time in weeks, she realized maybe all this time they hadn't been talking about the same thing. "What covered?" she said dumbly, leaning back on her heels and studying the elevator as it made its slow descent to the lobby.

"Everything," he answered, sounding equally bewildered. "I've got the personnel files from the bank. We'll know soon who it was that facilitated the transfer. And then - Kate - I don't... I haven't let it fall through the cracks. I promise. Even with this thing with Mason going on. Mason is - he's Mason and he'll be fine-"

"Castle," she interrupted him. "I'm not worried about Bracken. We're closer to actually nailing him for all of this than we have ever been."

"Then what are you even _doing_?" Castle said. He sounded like a child, plaintive and out of sorts, whining to her.

"I'm at the treatment center," she admitted. "I've been... talking with Saber. Off and on."

He was stone silent, not even breath, and the elevator doors chose that moment to slide open, disgorging a host of medical workers leaving for lunch. Kate waited while they exited the lift, and then she stepped on.

"Castle," she said, more question than anything.

"I... that is legally irresponsible, Beckett."

"Why I didn't tell you."

"If he makes noise-"

"He hasn't. I think he enjoys lording it over me. All his knowledge."

"What are you even trying to accomplish here? Some kind of... is this therapy? Did Dr King tell you to-"

"No," she hissed, jabbing her finger into the button for the fifth floor. She'd been so hung on his next words that she'd forgotten when she first stepped on. "Castle. He knows about everything - what it was like, what went on behind closed doors, what the regimen did."

"But." Castle sighed and she could practically see him scraping his hand down his face. "Kate, please be careful. Turn your phone off so there's no tracking-"

"I'm on one of the burners, sweetheart." She'd already thought of that. She'd thought of a hell of a lot more than just how easily Castle could GPS track her phone. "I'm ghosting my calls and alerts."

"Oh, good. How did you sign in?"

"Classified. The guard has one of my covers."

"That can be traced back to you."

"With difficulty. But Saber isn't going to rattle any cages or make noise, Rick. It's just him and me up there in that suite and he likes it that way. He likes having me all to himself, knowing that Black hates me - and you and I together even more - and I can use that to my advantage."

"I don't like it."

"You don't have to like it. I'm doing what's necessary for the mission."

"What mission?" he growled. "This is just you... I don't even know. I thought you'd be here when I got back and we could work on these personnel records. We are so _close_, Kate. It's almost over."

She went quiet and the elevator doors slid open, revealing the suite of recovery rooms where Saber was being held. She had her alternate ID already out and allowed the guard in the hall to inspect it.

"Kate. We're so close to having it finally be done. Don't you want that?"

"Of course I do," she said automatically, her heart in her throat. "It's part of the plan - everything in place for..." She knew he wanted a family, knew he wanted to create this perfect life he'd never gotten, but she hadn't realized until now how desperately he wanted it. "We'll get him. You're right - we're so close. But I'll be back in a couple of hours, Rick. Just - I have to see Saber first."

"I don't understand why you're doing this."

"I don't understand why you're not," she said bitterly.

And then she hung up on him and walked through the suite to find Dr Saber.

* * *

Beckett bit the inside of her cheek to keep her temper on a slow simmer. She was perched on the edge of the upholstered wingback as Dr Saber was served his meal. His leg was in a brace and she could see the ugly black scars where stitches knitted skin together over the staples and pins and plates in his knees. He didn't look comfortable - he looked in severe pain, actually - and that was the only thing that kept her mouth shut.

The aide - a burly male with biceps bigger than Castle's - moved away from the narrow breakfast table and disappeared back through the door. Beckett knew there were two others in the anteroom who were on shift this afternoon, acting as both guard and therapist.

"To what do I owe the honor?" Saber murmured with a lift of his lips. Beckett couldn't help but dig her fingernails into the soft skin of her palm as the man slowly peeled the aluminum foil back from his baked potato.

No knife, and the fork was plastic, and she could tell that irked him.

"You know why I'm here," she said before she could edit herself. She clamped her lips together as his face flashed with irritation. "I need your help."

Her admittance caused the darkness in his eyes to harden, a cruel pleasure that made her skin crawl. She could understand how Black and Saber had been best buddies - and she could see even more how Black had left him behind.

Saber was a messy eater and she didn't think it was just because of the pain or the meds. He had a practiced air about him, pieces of baked potato dusting his sweater and butter stains on the paper placemat. When Saber took his first bite, he brushed his fingers off on his sleeve in a gesture that looked oft-used. That lack of fastidiousness would have crawled under Black's skin for sure; Beckett had worked under and around Castle's father too long not to know how exacting he was.

Not just the slovenly manner. Saber was too conniving, too self-serving for someone like Black to keep him on. Black was devious, yes, but he did it all in service to a greater goal, a purpose which made the ends justify the means. He had standards that Saber would never have measured up to.

Beckett loathed that Machiavellian philosophy, especially because of what it had done to her husband, but at least in choice of comrade, Beckett agreed with Black's ditching of Saber. Castle's father had surrounded himself with people who were strictly disciplined, people who abided by a code of conduct - to his credit, people like Eastman and Mitchell - and a guy like Saber must have been distasteful.

That alone meant Saber had information that Beckett could use. If Black had kept the untidy, pontificating asshole around, then Black had needed him for the regimen. For Castle.

And so Beckett did too.

"Did your husband suffer a relapse?" Saber said with a smirk. A soft piece of baked potato dropped from the raised fork.

Beckett held her breath, let her stunned silence do the work.

Saber's mouth unfurled like the Grinch's, eyes slitted with a perverse joy. "I thought so. What is it this time? He go AWOL? Stroke out? The squad had a variety of adverse effects before we got those stabilizers in place." Saber chuckled to himself over some memory that apparently amused him. "Oh, Martinez, poor bastard. Shoving razorblades under his skin to dig out the insects he imagined crawling under there."

Holy fuck.

Kate's breath stopped.

Saber lifted his eyes from his baked potato and his smile faltered. "None of that? At all?" His eyes narrowed. "Can't be long now though. Is he showing signs yet? Chills, hot flashes, hearing voices?"

Oh _God. _Castle.

_"_Cat got your tongue, girl? Come on. This is a two-way street. You tell me what symptoms he's got and I'll tell you what you want to know."

She opened her mouth and heard the sound that came out, the choking disbelief. "What?"

"If you don't talk to me, I don't talk to you. That's how this works."

"Signs of what?" Squad. Saber had said a squad. Martinez who shoved razorblades under his skin. "Signs of a... a breakdown?"

"Breakdown, stroke, heart attack, all manner of issues. Your boy had six doses of serum in one go. _And no damn stabilizers. _You bunch of idiots, mucking around in things you don't know. You didn't even ask for my help, just kicked me out of the inner circle, just like his damn father. He's got to have one of those conditions, _something_."

She stood slowly from the table and pressed her fists into the surface to keep from leaping over the short distance and strangling his smug little neck. "I _asked_ you. I gave you the chance to _help us_ and you-"

Saber growled and jabbed the fork in her direction. "You little bitch. You're the reason I'm in this damn chair with fourteen screws in my knee and being monitored like a damn traitor. A _traitor_. I did _everything, _gave everything, for this regimen, for Black's fucking experiment and his lab rat of a son."

She switched tactics. "You said stabilizers. What are those?"

"No. Nothing. You get nothing. Leave."

She leaned forward and felt the rage burning clear and bright. "You tell me what he needs, or so help me God, I will make your life hell in here."

"You fucking try it," he spat back. "You shot me; I don't owe you anything."

"And Castle? What about what you owe him? For _years_ you worked with his father, screwing with his DNA, changing his body, shaping his brain to your own designs. You owe him the answers."

"For what? It's not like he was Frankenstein's monster. I took a pitiful little boy, an orphaned sniveling wimp, and I gave him _power._ He should be thanking me."

"He wasn't an orphan," she flared back. She bit her tongue, tasted blood as she struggled to just keep her damn mouth shut. Not give him any more ammunition. She couldn't bear to think of her husband as a boy, longing for a hero in his father and wishing for his mother at night in the darkness - and all the while, Black dosing him to see what would happen.

"No matter," Saber dismissed. "Without those stabilizers, I get the last laugh. I get to watch your spy fall apart."

"Over my dead body," she snarled and shoved back from the table to stalk away.

Hell no. No.

Castle was _not_ falling apart.

* * *

"Castle?"

His spine jerked him upright in the seat at the sound of her voice on the phone. "Kate. Are you-?"

"I need-" There was a choked noised and he heard her breathing hard. "I - are you okay?"

"Am _I _okay?" he growled. "You sound - What's going on, Kate?"

"Just is there - are there - you said you'd tell me if anything..."

"Hey, hey," he soothed, standing up and abandoning his station. "Kate? There's nothing, I promise. Not even cold. What's going on, love? What did Saber say to you?"

"It's bad, Castle," she whispered over the phone. "Oh, God."

"He's just screwing with us, baby. I'm fine. I promise."

"No, he's not. He thought you'd already - he mentioned... terrible side effects, Rick."

"I'm fine, love. I'm just fine. I promise."

"For how long though? He said - there was a squad. There was a - a man who - razors that - Castle."

"Where are you right now, Kate?" He was already out of the command center and jogging towards the elevators. He punched the button hard and swiped his ID, waiting impatiently on the balls of his feet. Martinez. The Special Forces guys. "Kate? Where are you?"

"I'm at - just outside the rehab center."

"I'm coming to meet you."

"No, Castle, I-"

"Yes," he insisted. "Can you make it to Central Park?"

"_Make_ it?"

"Love, this isn't the time to raise your hackles at my word choice. Go to Central Park. I'll meet you at Belvedere Castle. Okay?"

"I'm not-"

"Kate."

"Fine," she said tightly. But he didn't think it was irritation; it sounded more like Kate on the fine, crumbling edge of her control. "Central Park."

"It'll take me about twenty minutes," he warned her. "I'm in the elevator right now."

"Okay, all right already. I'm not going to collapse," she muttered. "I'll see you soon."

She hung up on him. He figured that was a good sign at least.

* * *

When Rick arrived at the base of Belvedere Castle, Beckett had already managed to get herself together. She hurried down from the top turret, taking the winding staircase in the near-darkness, and found him at the bottom before he could start looking for her.

"Kate," he said, relief evident in his voice. His embrace was bruising but she allowed it, kept herself strong under his touch.

"I made an appointment with Dr King," she told him. A way to soothe whatever beast still lived inside him after Russia.

"Oh. Good. That's good."

She was going there to pump him for information, as subtly as she could, but she knew Castle would interpret it a different way.

"What happened?" he asked. His face was lined when he pulled back from her, worry pressing cuts into the corners of his eyes.

Though she had it under control, she couldn't quite manage to keep from running her fingers lightly at those lines and trailing back through his hair. "Saber knows."

"What exactly?"

"He must have been in on monitoring or administration of the drugs. It's more than just the injections."

"Yeah, I know. I had pills and stuff." His careless shrug under her fingers made her want to squeeze his neck, but she only sighed and drew her hand down to his shoulder.

"He said the pills you usually took with the injections were stabilizers."

"Like the mood stabilizers?"

"No," she shook her head, felt it creeping back up her throat. "Like - to stabilize whatever was in those injections. I got the feeling he spent years observing you."

"I don't remember him, but I'm sure there a ton of people my father picked up along the way for his own ends."

Central Park was crowded this afternoon, tourists and natives both, and the crush of people pushing towards the turret made her step into Castle. He looped an arm around her waist so casually that she knew then that he was putting up a facade, that he was _trying_.

For her. Because he was afraid for her.

She held a fist around her composure, iron-willed and deathly tight, and she smiled. "It surprised me," she explained badly. "That he was so involved. That there was more to it."

"You said..." His hesitance made her stomach clench. "You said something about razors? What - what was that?"

"A story he told to scare me," she said easily. Almost easily. She was working on it; it would come. Castle wasn't the only one who could don a persona like a mask and make the world look brighter than it was. "Never mind. The point is that there was a program, at one time. More than just yourself."

"Oh? How do you know that?"

"He mentioned a squad. I'm guessing an Army squad who were their guinea pigs for various elements of the regimen. They weren't... given stabilizers," she admitted.

"Oh. So. It's bad without stabilizers," he said slowly. His eyes searched hers and she hoped he read only what she wanted him to. "The razor story. I knew him - Martinez. I knew only some of them, but I knew they - I knew it didn't go well. I just assumed... there was a lot of PTSD. But Kate, you don't have to worry because I've been taking those pills my whole life. I'm pretty damn stable."

His grin was crooked and a little more hopeful than he probably meant for her to see.

"You're pretty stable," she echoed. But she reached for his hand and squeezed, gauging the warmth of his fingers, just to check. "I'm meeting with King in an hour. He fit me in."

"Good. You're okay?"

"I'm fine. I just didn't expect it," she said.

"I don't want you to worry about this, Kate. It's doubtful I'll ever need it again and I promise you I'm keeping on top of things. The doctors are going to look at me and you'll see."

"I know," she answered. It was the most truthful she could be. He was flexing his fingers around her hand, studying her like he did a potential informant, as if she might have some hidden flaw, some crack in her psyche that would make her unstable.

"I love you," he said softly. His lips came to hers lightly, in a way that ached, and she couldn't help cupping the back of his head and holding him there.

* * *

His fingertips were blanched white in the cold.

Castle studied the lifeless skin with an odd sense of removal, curious about the total lack of feeling. He flexed his hand around his weapon and lifted his head to look at Mitchell in the bright cold. His partner for the raid gave him a tight nod, and Castle couldn't waste any more time staring at his hands.

He gestured for the team to follow him and began to lead his tactical group through the last of the winter sunlight. The frost crunched under his boots and the grip of his weapon was painful; blood rushing back to his fingers finally.

He'd tell her. He would.

After he took this guy in for questioning.

This was the man who'd paid Coonan for the hit on Kate's mother.

This came first.

* * *

Friday. It had to wait until Friday.

Threkeld was coming, Castle had tests scheduled. The cold in his fingers was just a sign that he was reverting to normal, nothing more. He'd been off the regimen for years, living with Kate, and it'd been fine.

Castle processed the lawyer who had arranged the money transfer between Coonan and Bracken, being certain that the paperwork was in order. The coterie of Secret Service agents on their joint task force were still hanging around the Office, acting as checks and balances, but Castle wasn't going to screw this up.

When Beckett came into the command center, he stood to meet her, filled her in on their progress. He noted her flushed cheeks, the mark of a session with King. "If we can break him," he finished up. "Then we'll have a direct lead back to Bracken. First one since..."

"First direct connection ever," she insisted with a rough smile. She looked like she was hanging in there. "That's good, Rick. I'm sorry I couldn't be any help."

"You do what you have to do," he allowed. "Now, I need you and Mitch on interrogation for this one. Do your homework because Secret Service is sitting in and the second this thing turns on us, we're screwed."

She nodded tightly but her hand came out and caressed his hip, a strangely intimate gesture for the Office. "You're okay," she said, as if she needed to remind herself.

"I'm okay," he said. He was. His fingers were no longer bloodless from the cold. He'd tell her later. "Get to work, Beckett."

"Sir, yes, sir," she said, smart-assing her way to her station.

He went back to his own computer and flexed his hand again. His fingers felt stiff.

* * *

Mitchell handed her another case file and she added it to the stack already swamping her desk. She hadn't meant to get so bogged down in work right now, but this lawyer had ties to Bracken somewhere back in the mists and Castle was watching her like a hawk.

"Oh, hey, Beckett," Mitchell said, pausing with the laptop in front of him. "I tried getting you access to those old mission logs. But turns out I gotta go through him to get it."

"No," she said quickly. "You don't need to do that. I'll ask Rick myself."

He nodded, but he wasn't stupid; she could see the calculation on his face.

"Okay, what about this?" she asked quickly, changing the subject. "Let's pull out his class at Harvard Law and see if there are any good ole boy connections."

"Worth a shot," Mitchell said, ready to let it go.

Beckett took a breath and carefully kept her face neutral, skimmed the folders in her hands until she pulled out the Harvard transcripts and details. Mitchell went back to the laptop, using electronic means to search databases for the lawyer's connection to Bracken.

She'd gotten nowhere with Dr King. Their therapist was entirely too clever for Kate to do any kind of subtle probing, so she'd ended up asking forthright questions of him, couching it in terms of needing reassurances about his trust once more, now that Castle had been in the hospital because of the regimen.

He'd seen through most of it, called her on it. Then they had a thirty minute session in which Dr King touched on all those dark, raw places that fed her need for control, to have answers and orderly results and everything at hand. Didn't change the fact that Castle needed regimen - needed those stabilizing pills. Didn't mean that Beckett was any closer to finding the truth, even if maybe she was now a little less likely to panic.

At least she was being reasonable; the conversation with King had given her that much.

And reason dictated that she had one last contact, one last play to make. King hadn't known details about those extra pills, Saber wouldn't be able to help her acquire them, and Kate couldn't get into Castle's old files. All her leads were dead ends but for one.

Agent Black himself.

He was the only other person in the world who not only knew about the regimen and what it entailed, but who also wanted Richard Castle to remain a super spy.

She was going to have to reach out to him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Close Encounters 13**

* * *

Beckett's heart was pounding, her palms damp with sweat. Ryan kept giving her funny looks, but she merely pressed her lips together and fought against it.

"All right, here's where I've been," Ryan said quietly. He opened the door to the server room with his key card and Beckett had a flash of guilt for it, but it wasn't like what she was doing was illegal. They were inside the CIA Office's server room and she was only doing what had to be done.

"Which one have you been working on?" she asked.

"Right here."

"I won't bother that one," she told him, bypassing the stacks of humming computer CPUs. She pulled out the tray that house the keyboard and station monitor for the server on Ryan's left. "I'll use this one. Thank you."

"We're going to get Bracken," Ryan said in a low voice. He gave her a quick nod and then left Beckett to the room. But it wasn't Bracken she was worried about.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and her hair fell forward, a curtain of momentary darkness it the cool server room. She shivered and brushed it back with one hand, looped a rubber band around it to put it in a bun. She didn't need any distractions.

Beckett logged into the server with the admin code and routed the programs on top to run in the background. Ryan had been doing regular checks, but she didn't want to interfere with his work. All she needed was the secure station and some privacy to make this phone call.

She opened the application that the CIA used for station to station calls and entered her identifying code words into the message box. Her fingers left damp halos on the keys as she typed, and she hunched her shoulders as she waited for the North African listening station to confirm.

She still didn't know who was in charge down there. Castle had gotten in touch with the kid - a guy named Reynolds fresh out of the CIA training camp - but it'd been hit and miss with recent communiques. They'd taken Reynolds out to dinner once and Castle had known him since he'd been on the surveillance team tasked to follow her around. If Reynolds wasn't answering regularly, she didn't know what was going on over there.

After an agonizing thirty seconds, the message flared back bright green on the screen.

Confirmation code and ready status.

Beckett pressed her headphones into the jack and dialed the station, breathless as she waited. The call went through and the line - as it always was down here - was crystal clear.

"This is the Station Keeper," the voice said quickly. "Please confirm submission." It sounded like Reynolds. She thought.

"This is the Station Master. ID Mermaid. Is the package still unopened?"

The hesitation made her fingers go numb, but then Station Keeper was rushing to respond. "Mermaid, the package remains unopened."

"I need you to open it," she scraped out. "I need to speak with Captain Ahab."

"Mermaid, please confirm. You want to speak with Captain Ahab?"

"Confirmation code Bravo-Kilo, 41319."

"Confirmation received. I'll go open the package."

Beckett held her breath as she waited, felt the pinpricks of danger across her back like she was being hunted. She'd felt the same that moment in the alley when Black had pushed her to her knees and she'd known the end was coming.

The voice on the line came entirely too soon - not just for her state of mind, but also for how long it should have taken the Station Keeper to let Black out of a secure cell and walk him, chained and with proper precautions, towards the communications room.

"This is Ahab," the voice intoned. "Mermaid, is it?"

"You know who this is," she said back. She stiffened her spine and reminded herself he was in North Africa. "And you know I wouldn't be talking to you unless it was important."

There was silence and she let it play out, let him imagine the worst, let him wonder about his son. She had no problem playing the damn mind games. She could do this all day.

"Important," Black finally said. "So. Get on with it."

"He's... he needs the stabilizers. He got sick and we had to give him an infusion of those shots-"

"What shots? Where did you get the injections?"

"From his freezer," she admitted. "He'd saved them."

"You are a damn fool," he muttered.

"He was dying. He couldn't breathe. He caught pneumonia and it mutated because of the damn regimen you've had him on." Beckett gripped the edges of the keyboard to keep from throwing it. "It's your fault he's like this. We didn't have anything else - and it saved his life. Only-"

"Only now he's insane, is that what you're telling me? You've had to lock him up."

She couldn't help the way icy terror dumped straight down her spine and sloshed in her guts. "N-no," she choked out. "No, he's not - is that what happens?"

"If he's not deranged, then - my dear - how ever are you calling me?"

She heard it now, the delight in his voice because he knew she'd gone behind Castle's back for this. "I'm calling you because eventually he's going to need those stabilizers, because already those injections are wearing off. I'm calling because I assumed you had an interest in saving his life."

"I have an interest in a great many things, Ms Beckett."

"It's Agent," she said carefully. She debated for a moment, but she knew she had nothing to lose. "And I don't want him to die. Please."

The silence was damning. Kate closed her eyes and wondered how she should have played it, what else she could have possibly done or said to make him help her.

"Agent," his voice came clearly. "You get my son to see me. And I'll do the rest."

Her stomach dropped. "To... see you?"

"He comes here to me. _He_ asks me for my help. Not you. I want him."

* * *

When Beckett finally texted him back, Castle pushed his phone into his pants pocket and stood from his station, heading for the break room. He found her inside with the refrigerator door open, her hair pulled back in a loose bun that made him want to trail his fingers along her neck.

"Hey," he greeted her. She turned around and her face had resumed that careful blank detachment he absolutely hated.

"Hey," she said back. She pulled a water bottle out off the bottom shelf and shut the door, turned arond to him. "Can we talk?"

"Of course," he answered, taking a step towards her out of reflex. She didn't exactly flinch but it was so close that a fist closed around his spine and made him jerk to a halt. "Kate?"

"Maybe not here," she said, her eyes casting up towards the ceiling. There were cameras - of course there were - but he didn't know what she could possibly want to talk to him about that they couldn't say inside the CIA.

Except... once. One time they had said, they had promised each other that they'd shut themselves up in the panic room and hash it out, the plan. The plan to assassinate Bracken. Surely she hadn't...

"Kate? We're making good progress," he said quietly. "The Joint Task Force has the lawyer buttoned up. He'll talk - he'll tell us what he knows about the Senator's extracurriculars. We're getting there."

The confusion slid behind her eyes without purchase, there and gone again. "I know."

He shifted on his feet and kept his breathing even, tried to figure out where and when they'd gone so wrong this time. He didn't think they were talking about the same things, didn't think they even had the same things on their minds. Whenever she looked at him, it was like it took her a long time to reach where he was.

"But we can't talk here?" he prompted her again, trying to nudge a confession or memory or anything that would give him a clue.

"No," she said. A strand of hair fell from her bun, sliding right down to frame her cheek. It made his chest hurt.

"Not here," he agreed. "Okay. Want to go right now or... when we get home?"

"Home is... home's fine," she nodded. Her fingers were twisting the cap off the water bottle, but she looked like she'd received a body blow. A fatal shot. She looked blank and gone and he hated it.

"Let's go now," he said. "We'll go home."

"No," she startled, eyes coming back to him. "No, I've still got research to do on the lawyer. Mitch and I are looking at his Harvard connections. It's a solid lead. We've got hours of work to do."

He couldn't understand her. For the life of him, nothing she said made any sense. He'd thought she wanted to convince him to do something permanent about Bracken, but now she was adamantly defending the work towards justice they were doing.

"Okay," he said finally. "I've got a few things here left to do too."

She nodded. "At home, then. I... there are some things we need to - figure out," she finished lamely.

"Kate," he said quietly. Her head came up, that curl of hair getting in her way so that she pushed it back. She looked absolutely consumed with whatever it was, so gone, so removed, so remote. "I love you."

That did it, that brought her back.

She unwrapped her arms from her body and embraced him instead, taking the last four steps between them so fast that he didn't even see it, only felt the impact of her tension against him. Castle hugged her back, a sigh of relief in his chest, and stood holding her for as long as she'd let him.

"I love you too," she whispered at his ear. "I love you so much."

* * *

Castle settled the bag of takeout on the kitchen counter and started removing the contents methodically. His fingers ached after the long walk home, but he'd made her go on ahead of him so he could get his shit together.

Whatever was going on, she hadn't run from him. She'd stuck out the day at the Office and they'd even had a few moments of collaboration that had made his blood sing and his heart race, the spark and thrill of working with her momentarily eclipsing whatever knot of tension still tangled in his guts.

She was upstairs, he knew; she'd called out and let him know when he'd opened the door. Even now he could hear her walking around over his head - the empty bedroom? the hallway now - and finally on the stairs.

"Rick?"

"In the kitchen. I got your favorite."

"Oh, I love you," she hummed. He glanced up in time to see her come in through the doorway, hair damp from a bath or shower, arms crossed over her chest. One of his black t-shirts was dipping off her shoulder and the yoga pants looked new and appealingly tight. Her smile was in place, and not even false, and he smiled back in a rush of relief.

"Get us plates," he told her.

She leaned in first and kissed him, wrapping her fingers around his bicep for balance and stroking at the material of his dress shirt.

"You look better," he couldn't help saying.

"It's fine. It'll be fine. I let it... mess with my head, but I'm good now."

He nodded, assumed all of this was part of the conversation they needed to have.

And then it struck him. What this was about. Why she hadn't wanted to talk to him at work, why it didn't even have anything to do with work at all.

They weren't pregnant. And she had gone to the doctor sometime last week and he'd wanted to ask Boyd to test him out but maybe she'd already done that when he was at Stone Farm and battling pneumonia. Maybe she already knew.

"I can't have kids," he said, feeling it drop in his guts like a stone. "That's it, isn't it? It's damaged-"

"No," she blurted out. Her arms wrapped around him. "No, God, Castle. No, love. I haven't checked you or even me beyond... No. It's not that. I'm sorry. Have you been thinking that this whole time?"

"I don't know," he sighed, sinking his face down into her neck and hanging on. "No. Just. Just now. I thought..."

"I didn't want to check," she whispered. "I didn't want to even... so I don't know, Castle. I don't know why I'm not pregnant or what's going on except just everyday life and stress and maybe my body just won't-"

"Enough," he grunted. "Stop. We won't - we said we wouldn't worry about it or do anything one way or another. Not until after all this."

She nodded against him, and he felt it drop off his shoulders, melt away from her as well. They'd agreed that they wouldn't stop it, but they weren't really trying. A couple of negative pregnancy tests didn't mean it was impossible.

Her hand gripped the back of his neck and pulled him away from her. She gave him a determined look. "Let's get our plates, set up on the couch, and then we'll talk. Okay? Because I think I've made you sick with worry over me and it's not about me at all. I didn't mean to get you tied in knots, baby."

"I'm okay," he insisted, but yeah, it had been churning up his insides. "But dinner sounds good."

She kissed him again, promise in the taste of her tongue, and her humming nudge against his nose made him wrap her harder in his arms. She caressed his nape, fingers in his hair, and the touch did wonders.

"Hey," she whispered. "I love you. We're going to be okay, you and me. We're always going to make it."

"I know," he got out, choking on it.

"You better not be crying," she murmured.

He grunted a laugh and finally released her, grateful for her, for this, for knowing without a doubt that whatever it was, they could handle it.

* * *

She'd mapped out ahead of time what points to highlight and which arguments to make; she had sat down on the floor of the empty bedroom and gone over her notes so she'd be prepared for this.

She'd thought she had a strategy, but strategy deserted her the moment Castle - with that broken-hearted, little boy look on his face - had asked if he was damaged.

Gone. Just like that.

And now she had no idea what to say or how to say it.

Castle had inhaled three plates of Chinese, which made her believe once more that he really was stable, despite not having the full spectrum of the regimen, and while she hadn't been able to eat much at all, she'd forced down what she could just to keep him from worrying about it.

There had been a time not long ago that she wouldn't have been able to do that, no matter how much she'd wanted to ease his mind, and she was grateful she was able to give him that. Grateful for her health now because she'd need it - not only as a weapon against Castle's bullying nature, but also as a tool to convince him she was right. She could hold her own and she didn't have to worry that he was going to fall all over himself trying to 'protect' her.

"Okay," Castle said suddenly, taking her half-eaten plate from her hands. "Man up, Beckett. Just tell me. I'm done with waiting."

She stared at him, entirely speechless.

"Come on. Right now. Just say it."

It burned inside her and she found the words bursting out before she could stop them. "I think we should ask your dad."

"No."

"You haven't even _heard-"_

_"_First of all, he's never been my _dad_. He is - unfortunately - my father. But your father? That's a dad. You know the difference. Don't make the mistake of thinking of Black in terms of parental responsibility or filial love."

She swallowed down her thundering heart and reached for his hand, gripping him hard. "Please don't interrupt me. I need you to listen."

His fingers flipped and laced with hers, a tight squeeze, and she looked up to see the chastened look on his face. But he didn't open his mouth. He had a tendency to use words like a weapon - for good or bad - and he'd always had more of them than her, more of the right ones. At least therapy had taught him how to pause for her, to stop and really hear what she tried to say when the words were finally there.

"I need... I need to know what's been done to you," she started, choosing those words carefully. So carefully. She had to do this right or he'd never agree. "We promised each other that we'd be responsible for ourselves for the other person. I promised to stick to the program so that I'd be strong again, healthy again, because I mattered to you. I've tried to keep that promise."

"You have," he said quickly, interrupting to curl his hand at her hip, warm and dangerous. "You've done so well, Kate. You're good."

"Now it's your turn," she said, drawing her hand down to his and removing it from her waist. "I need to find out if you're going to be okay, if shooting you full of those injections hasn't done something irreparable, if you're going to experience side effects unless we find the rest of those meds."

He stared her, no words.

Kate gripped his wide palm and stared down at his hand cradled in her lap, the flush of pink to his skin and the curl of his fingers. She'd seen him flexing a lot today in the cold; he'd worn a jacket to cut the wind. Normal stuff, yes, but not normal for a guy who was supposed to be above normal.

Supposed to be extraordinary.

"Kate," he said quietly. She lifted her head and his eyes were so tender. "Sweetheart, I'm going to be fine. I've got the docs looking at me on Friday, and they'll keep on top of everything. I haven't had any symptoms or side effects. What you did - those injections - you saved my life. I'm not going anywhere. I promise you. Just like I promised we'd get Bracken - and see how close we are?"

Oh, Rick. It had nothing to do with Bracken. If Castle's body shut down on him because he didn't have those stabilizers, there was absolutely nothing a promise could do about it.

"The only way to stay on top of it," she said carefully, "is by knowing as much as we can about the full regimen. The injections worked when it came down to the wire, but we don't have any more of that serum, no more magic silver cases. We need a supply on hand; we need to know what to do with it when we have it. And we need the stabilizers. Based on everything I've found, what I've been told and seen with my own eyes - Rick, _you_ need it."

"If I can... if I can survive without it," he said. He stopped and shook his head, mouth deep with frown lines. "Kate, don't you understand that I don't want to be that guy? That was the guy who was involved in his father's plots and machinations. The guy that agreed to fake his own death because he couldn't break free of his father. The guy that let him nearly murder you because-"

"No, you didn't," she said fiercely. "You didn't let him do anything. You saved my life and nearly beat him to death doing it. So, no. No more of that. You don't want to be that guy, I understand. But part of who you are, the man I love, is that super spy. How do you think you managed to haul us both out of Russia?"

He lifted his head and the bleak acceptance on his face made her realize it was more than that, more than just not wanting to be his father's experiment.

He didn't want to be his father's son.

Kate wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself into his lap, her mouth at his temple. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for how he treated you, what he's done to you, Rick. But this is who you are and I wouldn't change you, I wouldn't have you be any other way. I love _you_. And I want to keep you around a little while longer, okay?"

He nodded against her.

"That's why we need to talk to him. He has all the answers - he's the root of this. You understand? He's where we can get more, find out how to keep you here with me. All we have to do is talk to him."

Castle stiffened.

"Rick?"

"No," he choked out.

"No?"

"I'm not - we're not talking to him. I don't want him to have anything to do with me. With you. With us. Nothing. He wants to _kill _you, Kate. We'll find another way."

But there wasn't another way.

* * *

Beckett woke with a sharp and total awareness in the pitch black of their bedroom, flat on her back, heart pounding.

Her ribs ached, felt sliced open, and she mindlessly drew a hand over her chest and probed the skin, searching for the wound.

But the feeling faded as she laid there, touching the curve of her ribs where they caged her lungs. A knife or a claw mark, but that impression was fading as well.

A dream.

And a dream, also, the fight she'd had with him and his leaving on a plane for Sydney, Australia for no reason. A dream, also, the sense of being abandoned and out of place, since the reality of things was the man sleeping beside her in the night.

But Kate couldn't move, still locked in the blended time between dreams and wakefulness, and she watched the pattern of lights on the ceiling as the street lamps made designs through the bare branches and cast their shadows above her.

When the thud of her heart matched the scrape of trees against the window, she could finally turn over and lay against him. It was hot in the close confines of the covers, the pocket of air near him as blazing as his skin, but it melted the last vestiges of a dream she didn't want to remember anyway.

She tried to remind herself that Castle was alive, and healthy, that his body had recovered from the pneumonia and his lungs were clear. More than that, he was back to some of his old ways again - striding around coatless in the winter like he owned the world and assumed he could always take up his rightful place in it. Confident and assured, the grace of a majestic animal - and the cunning.

But the heart of a poet, a bard, a storyteller. And the story he wanted to tell meant letting go of his old life in every way.

There would be no sit-down conversation with his father about the regimen.

She had to respect that. Because that was the soul of her husband - the determined, unstoppable man who loved her.

She didn't know how exactly - her dreams, though turbulent and strangely vivid, hadn't given her that answer - but she would find some other way.

It looked bleak, but she loved him. That would have to carry her through.


	8. Chapter 8

**Close Encounters 13**

* * *

"Probably been long abandoned," Mitchell said in her ear. "This stuff with Bracken went down like fifteen years ago almost."

"Yeah, you're right," Beckett answered quietly. They'd split into teams around the farm yard in upstate New York, the winter air cold and crisp in the morning light. Ice had formed on the branches overnight and frost broke off under her boots. Castle looked forlorn and alone standing as point just ahead of her, but he was going over the blueprints with his other tact team leaders.

"You don't think we'll actually find anything, do you?"

"Is this your way of telling me not to get my hopes up?" she snorted. The lawyer had rolled late last night, offering up an address of the place where he'd done business with Bracken off the books.

Back in the day, this farmhouse had been a front for the senator's illegal activities and a clearinghouse for a majority of the money - and the cargo. The lawyer had been clear that this place had been a staging ground for Bracken's illegal activities. It was owned by a tangled knot of companies that had thin and obscure ties back to Bracken, but ties they were. And close enough.

The warrant had come through the AG's office and the Secret Service were at their side for this one. For fifteen years, bad things had happened at this place. Kate could feel it in the air, see it in the creaking bones of the farmhouse, the haunt of crows in the trees and their still, watchful eyes.

She was ready to end this. Ready for this story to have its close.

"Suit up," Mitchell murmured under his breath.

She glanced up and saw Castle turning to their squad, his weapon in hand at his thigh. He looked so strong, the bullet proof vest laying over him like a thin sheen of armor, the collar of his dress shirt poking above one strap and making her fingers itch to tuck it in.

"All right. We've got our warrant. We don't expect trouble, but we don't know what we'll find. Rusty farm equipment or something else. Listen to your team leaders and go on my command."

He nodded once and turned to lead them across the property.

Beckett, along with thirty other agents, unholstered her weapon and stepped into her stance, following in formation. She tasted the metal of winter in the air and the sense that everything that happened here today was going to be pressed into her memory for the rest of her life.

For good or bad.

* * *

She shivered as she entered the old barn, the smell of rotted wood in the air. Castle and Mitchell both were at her flank while the majority of their team was back at the farmhouse, crawling over every last inch of the place. She took in the details of the outbuilding even as she noted her guys' positions.

The wood was dark, the interior both cavernous and dim. No light reached the inside, and part of the barn had been remodeled into what looked like holding pens and work areas. A series of pulleys and chains was mounted into the reinforced ceiling, hooks at regular intervals, a clear path underneath with a thigh-high guiding wall. Castle stepped ahead of her to quietly clear the cage-like partitions to her left, while Mitch inspected the gears that seemed to control the chains.

"Slaughter," he said finally, giving her a swift glance back.

For animals? Or for people? Beckett pressed her lips together and kept searching with her gun raised before her. She didn't like the feeling in this place, and the chains and hooks were making her skin crawl.

She noted the great, terrible splash of dirty brown on the floor, layer after layer of stains right below the line of hooks.

She heard the blood-curdling scream first, the gunshot second. She pivoted automatically even as she saw Castle raise his weapon to defend himself against his attacker. But the wicked end of a shovel caught his shoulder and neck, felled Castle before he could stop the guy.

Her husband went down. The man lifted the shovel above his head like an ax and Beckett put four rounds in his chest, Mitchell another two in the same instant.

The first shot - she had no idea where it had come from, who.

"Castle," she called, vaulting over the wall and running to him even as she kept her eyes on his attacker.

"I got our guy," Mitchell called to her. "You get him."

"Look for a gun," she warned him. "I heard a shot." She came to her knees beside her husband, reached out a hand to the bright bloom of blood on his jaw. But his pulse was steady under her fingers and she caressed his face.

His eyes opened, breath sucked in even as he jerked upright, wheezing.

He'd caught a bullet in his vest, just at his ribs, and he clawed at the straps even as she caught his shoulders and steadied him.

"Fuck," he groaned, head tilting back as she released the strictures of the vest. "That's gonna leave a mark."

She grunted a laugh and slid her hand over the ugly mark at his neck where the shovel had gotten him. He hissed and pulled away from her touch.

"What happened?"

"He came out of the dark with a gun and I moved to intercept him. He was aiming at you."

"Moved to intercept," she said dully, watching the way the blood on his chin dripped down his neck. He was rubbing at his sternum and had his eyes closed; he looked pale and battered.

"You were in full view," he muttered.

"He shot you," she said quietly.

"I knocked the gun out of his hands," he said in return. "He grabbed the shovel and nailed me."

"Not before he _shot_ you," she reminded him.

"He came out of nowhere."

Castle had been too slow. A basic self-defense move that they had practiced a thousand times, together, in training, for fun just messing around... and Castle had been too slow.

"Thank God for the vest," Mitchell interrupted. "He's dead. Weapon's secure. Both of them. Nasty cut you got on your neck. Hit you pretty hard."

Castle reached up and touched the side of his neck where the blade had bit into his skin. Beckett looked away, the knot in her chest unable to unravel despite the easy way Castle got to his feet, the good-natured banter between him and Mitch.

She stood finally too, watched her husband with her heart sinking to her stomach. "You should get checked by the EMTs," she said.

Castle opened his mouth like he was going to shake her off, but she must look as completely done in as she felt, because he didn't say it. His vest dangled from one hand and his weapon was back in its holster on his hip, but he watched her a moment and then nodded.

"All right. Let me check in with team leaders and then I'm all yours."

Kate wrapped her arms around her body and watched him hustle back outside to get a report from his team, leaving her alone with the dead man in the barn.

* * *

Castle looked as stunned as she felt when the CIA medic diagnosed him with a concussion.

"A concussion. From just that?" he said into the silence. And then the surprise was blanked from his face.

She was moments from a panic attack; she could feel it. "What do we do?"

"Just keep checking on him. If he feels abnormally tired or gets confused, bring him into the clinic. He might throw up, but that's to be expected once or twice. If he throws up all night-"

"Bring him in," Kate said tersely.

"Exactly." The medic excused himself and headed for the dead guy still in the barn. The rest of the CIA team had found four others hiding out here, still doing day-to-day maintenance on a place that must still be operational. For what, they didn't know yet.

But they were close; even Beckett was feeling it, just how close they finally were to bringing in the senator who had ordered her mother's death. Strange how this how whole thing had felt so removed from her until this moment. Until she was standing in front of her husband - her partner - behind a tract of land where it had all started.

She reached out despite the witnesses milling around, and she stroked her fingers carefully through his hair. His scalp was sticky with blood; his eyes shifted to look at her, gave her a long and solemn gaze.

"You shot to kill," Castle said.

It should matter more than it did. "It was - instinct."

"Training," he muttered, lowering his head.

CIA training, yes. She'd shot to kill rather than disarm. "This is the life I have," she said, not sure it was really what he wanted to hear. "He's dead and... you're not."

"What do you think happens here?" Castle asked, his arm sweeping out towards the farm. He hadn't ducked away from her touch, though she knew he couldn't possibly love it in front of his men, so she dropped her hand.

"I have no idea. Barn looks like it was used for slaughter at one point."

"The stalls on the side were fresh - clean and in use."

"Slaughter still?"

"Or other cattle," he said quietly. "You know, about two years ago when Black started the initial investigation, there were at least two places we busted that were shipping girls over from war-torn Middle Eastern countries."

"Coonan was part of that," she answered.

Castle nodded thoughtfully, but he winced and lifted his hand to the side of his neck. The medic had bandaged the gash left from the blade of the shovel, but the bruise had already bloomed black and purple underneath.

"Could be his main source of income. Girls."

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, holding it back. "Human trafficking," she said, pulled for a moment by the idea that - over the last fifteen years - Bracken had ruined the lives of so many. So very many - not just through death, but with enslavement.

Beckett had been enslaved once as well, enslaved by Bracken to this obsession. But now she was free because of Castle. He had released her, dragged her out of the black hole of her mother's case, and he'd given her life again.

Now Kate had to do the same for him. Life for life.

* * *

Castle pocketed his phone and rubbed the side of his neck gingerly; the bandage covered the worst of it, but the bruise itself made his head throb. Didn't help that his fingers and toes were going numb now too, off and on.

Beckett came around the corner and into his office, stopped suddenly when she saw him standing right there. She looked tense enough to break, her body almost trembling with the tight control she exerted.

Castle reached out and dragged her all the way inside, shut the door behind her. He had to force her into his arms, so fiercely was she wound, but the moment her fingers curled in his shirt, he knew he had her.

For a little while at least.

"I called Boyd," he said softly into her hair. A peace offering. "I told him what happened."

"Yeah?" she scraped out. Her face was against the uninjured side of his neck, but one of her hands came up to smooth her fingers along the surgical tape just below the bandage.

"Yeah. I'm gonna go up there late Thursday night instead. Stay until Saturday night - maybe Sunday morning. The concussion makes it harder for them to do their tests and they want to go slow with me."

She nodded against him, a tremor running through her that she quickly suppressed. He wrapped his arms tighter around her as if that could help, as if the force of his grip would translate into a show of strength.

"I'm okay," he promised her.

She nodded again but it felt for show. Castle cupped the back of her neck and angled her mouth to his, took a slow, drugging kiss to prove what he couldn't find words to explain. Her fingers in his shirt dug in and the hand at the bottom of the bandage splayed out, and her body rose to meet his.

Castle broke to press his forehead to hers, breathing shallowly in the thin air between them. "I'm fine, Kate," he promised again, stroking his thumb at the vulnerable part of her neck, feeling her swallow. "I'm fine, sweetheart."

She nodded, the movement dislodging him, and he moved to wrap his arms around her again even though nothing he said or did seemed to reach her. She was a wall, and it was up against him this time, and he knew that was only because she was going to collapse if she didn't have it.

So he stopped trying to break it down, stopped trying to sneak past, and he simply stayed.

Even though she was inside his arms, she was so far removed. He felt the loss of her like a chill, and the numbness crept closer.

"I'm going to be fine," he said again, and the slight amendment to his words seemed to catch her.

"You are," she insisted. "You're going to be fine."

* * *

When he'd headed back to the command center to catch up on reports about the farmhouse and the four men taken into custody, Beckett finally found her way down to the room of servers. She closed the door behind her and took a breath, but she couldn't get enough air.

Leaning back, head against the metal, she closed her eyes and pushed it down, swallowed it down, reasserted her will. She took a final moment and then pushed off the door to the work station.

The keyboard slid out smoothly and she rested her fingers against the home row, searching inside herself for some measure of strength, for a better way. But there was only this way.

One way.

Through Black.

Beckett minimized the running programs that Ryan still had going on the desktop and she called up the station to station communiques. Her mouth was dry as she typed in the requisite code words for today, the command key that would give her access.

When the little black and green box popped up with the connection, she let out a breath and asked for the Station Keeper to verify.

The cursor blinked in the black box.

She crossed her arms over her chest and waited. The room was cold to keep the computers running efficiently and she drew her arms tighter and shivered.

The green cursor paused.

Continued to blink.

Beckett paced the length of the room and came back, but the Station Keeper still stayed dark. The hair on the back of her neck rose and she leaned over the keyboard and typed in the prompt once more.

She held her breath but nothing came back.

No one was answering.

Kate let out a frustrated growl and snagged a hand in her hair, squeezed her scalp as she closed her eyes and tried to think. Why would the station be dark? Why wouldn't the station keeper answer?

Black.

Of course, had to be. _Had _to be.

So she typed her plea directly into the machine: _He won't come. He was shot today - he needs the regimen._

It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either. The only way to get anything from Black was through his son. She hoped that was still true; she was banking on it.

And when the silence went on, when the cursor blinked without remorse: _Please._

It was still connected; the black box told her _someone_ was there.

Please, she thought. Please.

And then the black box closed. Communication lost.

Beckett sank to her knees and pressed her hands to the floor, head bowed, gulping for air, but her chest only torqued tighter, a fist around her lungs.

* * *

Castle dropped everything on the floor of the entryway - maybe a little too hard - and put a cautious hand up to his neck. Behind him, Kate pressed her palm to his back and pushed him gently inside so she could shut the door.

Home. He half-turned in the space and caught her hand. "I'm tired," he admitted. "More than just..."

She nodded tightly and her fingers curled around his, snared him. "You can sleep." Her eyes were searching his - for dilated pupils or trouble focusing, he knew - but she seemed able to let him go.

"Hungry though," he said. She pushed past him to leave her keys on the table, set her laptop bag on the stairs in a much gentler way than he had dumped his own stuff on the floor.

"I'll make you something," she said. "While you change."

"Change?"

She sighed and nodded her head towards him; he glanced down and saw the blood that stained the collar of his shirt. The bandage had gotten dirty too, he'd noticed earlier, and he should probably check it out.

"I'll go change," he sighed. "What are you making?"

"I don't know. We'll see."

"I like breakfast," he said hopefully. "You make good waffles."

Her smile snagged at the corner of her lips and she came into him, her hand brushing the buttons of his shirt. Her kiss was soft against his cheek. "Waffles then. Go."

He went, using the rail to haul himself up the stairs, and headed eagerly into their bedroom, stripping clothes as he went. His neck and shoulder were bruised, but when he got into the bathroom to get a look at it, it wasn't as bad as he'd feared.

From the look on her face, he'd been half cleaved in two and it was a miracle his head was still attached. But as he peeled the surgical tape from his skin, the bruise was already that blotchy yellow and blue of healing, and the cuts where the shovel had gotten him were scabbed over and nearly gone.

Castle picked at one of the spots until it bled, watching the dark red in the mirror until it dried up. Quickly, without fuss, and he wondered if this was normal.

Was any of this normal?

Castle sighed and pulled off his pants, headed back into the bedroom for pajamas. His muscles were tender with every movement but the twinges and strains were to be expected.

All in all, it wasn't that bad. He was grateful to his vest; he'd need a new one too. But really, he'd been dealt worse blows.

That time they'd tried to cut off his hand? Yeah, much worse. And hadn't Kate just asked him about that story this weekend? She knew he got into regular scrapes, that this was par for the course with him.

He wasn't _less_; he was just... in the thick of things.

Castle padded back downstairs barefoot, noted that his right hand was still intermittently numb from where the nerve in his neck had gotten pinched. Paramedic had said it'd be okay in a few days, but Castle hadn't exactly told Kate about it. He was afraid she'd see it as symptoms of the injections rather than what it was.

When he got to the living room, he could already smell the batter on the waffle iron, the scent of syrup latent in the air. It made him hungry in more ways than one, and he was glad he'd suggested it - maybe it would remind her he was still strong.

The picture she made in their kitchen had him halting in the doorway. In her work clothes, high heels still on and the swing of her necklace out over her breasts as she leaned forward to check the timer, Kate looked confident and supremely at ease. Maybe the waffles had gotten to her too, nudged her open to him again, made her mind stop spinning.

"Hey," he said softly.

She looked up and he realized that the confidence in her face wasn't about him, it was about herself. What she'd resolved to do or not do. She was done with worrying; she'd banished it by force.

"Smells awesome," he grinned.

She smiled back, though it was tight.

"I'll take over," he told her, slipping into the kitchen. He came to her side and ran his hand down her back, tugged her hip to draw her into him. His kiss fell on her temple and she sighed. "I've got it."

She turned into him and pressed her body to his in a moment of something he couldn't understand, but he held her with both arms, murmured love into her ear with his every breath.

When she was under control again, she stepped only marginally away from him.

"Go on, Kate," he said. "Go get changed."

And she went - like all she'd needed was his permission.

* * *

Kate didn't sleep.

For hours, she watched the moonlight draw long shadows over his face, the path of the light sinking, drowning out his features. She figured the night was over for her anyway, so she slipped out of bed and headed quietly for the empty bedroom.

She opened the closet door and stood in front of her timeline, studying each and every point she'd plotted, the moments and details of his life as a spy, the places she'd recreated from photocopies she'd taken out of her detective's notebook, or stories he'd told her in bed after sex, or the scars themselves along his body.

A knife blade here, a bullet wound there, a near-death hallucination, a drowning in a lake, an explosion mid-air, a collision on an international freeway, a motorcycle that spun out, a cracked collarbone, a concussion, a bridge-jump at night, a parachute that didn't open in time.

She skimmed her fingers over the copies she'd made of his own stories, his writing cramped and quick or straight and familiar, his very own words giving her hope if only for the richness of detail and the way he made it come alive.

But there were no more clues. No trails to follow, no leads to investigate, no details to track down. No matter how long she looked at the work she'd done over the last few weeks, it all led to the same place.

His father.

She was afraid.

It washed through her now, sudden and swift as a flood, filling her up and making her sink to the floor, hands pressed into her eyes as she let it. She was afraid of Black. But she was more afraid of what happened if she didn't confront him, what happened to Castle if this went on without redress, afraid that one day her husband would be a half-step behind on some important mission and she'd come back without him.

Afraid, afraid, afraid.

There was so much want in her. So many things she wanted for him because he deserved them, because he was such a good man, because she loved him and his broken, little-boy heart, because he'd had so much taken from him that he didn't even know the lack. She wanted to give him a child of his own and a family to make it home to; she wanted to make love to him in Cyprus in that infinity pool one more time; she wanted to thwart evil plots with him and save the world and be driven by such purpose and conviction and good.

Not fear.

But that's all she held room for inside herself; fear was crowding out everything else - the dreams and the wants and the love, all of it subsumed by the fear. And she knew she wasn't being a rational person; she could feel the panic attacks bubbling just under her skin; she just didn't know what else to do.

She lifted her head to stare at the timeline, hoping the change in angle would illuminate her way. On her knees, subjugated by love, wanting only to_ save_ him. Save them.

No answers were revealed, no mysterious paths to enlightenment.

She rubbed her wedding ring with her thumb and twisted it again and again, hoping for more, needing more, but it could be anywhere and nowhere; it could be a lab in Venezuela or the German scientist who'd relocated to Prague. It could be the facility at the Turkish base, or the military hospital complex at Ramstein.

She hooked her fingers in her necklace, realized she was playing with the things he'd given her - wedding ring and the necklace with his thumbprint etched into the Roman coin. She pressed the coin to her lips and felt the whorls of his mark, closed her eyes to breathe.

She couldn't take it with her. It'd be - nothing that could trace back to him, nothing to blow her cover as she got out of the States and moved deeper. She fumbled at the clasp and finally opened it, let it fall from her neck. She clasped it again and pressed her fist around the coin, the thumbprint, her proof of him.

The ring. She wasn't supposed to wear it on a mission; she wasn't supposed to take it out of the country. When they were overseas, she wore it on her mother's chain under her clothes and even that was pushing things. But when she moved to slide the ring from her finger, it wouldn't come loose. Wouldn't budge over her knuckle despite how thin her fingers were.

She was going to throw up; she couldn't leave it here. He had asked her to never take it off. He'd asked her to make it real and she couldn't - she just couldn't.

The cool blue stone gleamed in the dull light, and she twisted it around her finger to hide the gem in the cup of her hand, leaving only the band in view. She placed the necklace on the shelf inside the closet where she'd left her detective's notebook as source material, and then she stood up, closed the door on it all.

Castle would leave for Stone Farm tomorrow night, and she would leave as well.


	9. Chapter 9

**Close Encounters 13**

* * *

Thursday afternoon, Castle couldn't figure out what was going on with her. "Doc cleared me," he reminded her. "No concussion. I can drive."

She turned her head to him, confusion lacing her gaze. "I know."

"Oh. Good," he muttered. They were in line for a warrant and he hated to pause the investigation right now. "The leads we've gotten are good. Mitch and the boys will take care of things."

"We're very close," she said quietly.

He thought that was it. Maybe that was it. His leaving at such a crucial point in their case against Bracken when they both knew that Kate couldn't officially be in charge. Not if they didn't want the evidence to be thrown out; she couldn't possibly be that close to the evidence collection. It was bad enough that her husband was the lead, but his Agency name wasn't ever supposed to come to the light of day. The trial would take place behind closed doors, and hopefully that meant his name, the CIA, and their connection wouldn't be called into question.

Just that they could think in terms of 'when' the trial would take place was a huge step forward. "The prostitution ring we busted this morning is another good sign that he has no idea we're coming."

She nodded but she still stood at attention on the floor of the command center. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, saw the way she tracked every small movement on the screens.

"We've got it covered, Kate."

Her head jerked to him and a flash of something like despair was there and gone again. "We do," she said. "I know we do. It's not - it's just a matter of putting all the pieces together."

"On Friday while I'm gone, Mitch will have picked up the Senator's Chief of Staff. We'll hold him over the weekend, and Secret Service can interrogate him."

She nodded; it was all information she knew already, but he had the feeling she needed the sound of his voice going over it once more.

"By Monday, we'll know more about Bracken's operations out of DC and can tie him to the stuff here in New York."

"And then?" she said quietly.

"And then we build our case. The evidence is all on Floor Two, secure room, only me, Malone, you, and Espo can key card into it. Not even my damn father can get in that room."

She blanched. "I'm worried about Bryce."

"We're still looking for him," he said quietly. "When he disappeared... I can't say that I was surprised."

"I figured your father would leave him here to keep tabs on us. I never thought he might kill him."

"Bryce..." They didn't know for sure that Bryce had been murdered, but it was looking to be likely. Castle couldn't say that the man had gotten what was coming to him because Bryce probably hadn't known a thing about Black's real plans. But Bryce had been spying on his fellow operatives; he had been passing state secrets and classified information over to Black at the listening station, and so there was no way to measure how much damage the missing agent had done.

"I wish we knew," Kate said. "One way or another. Where he is."

"Probably in the Hudson," he sighed.

"But who? And when? If someone got to Bryce here, Castle, then those are enemies we don't know anything about - unknown agents who killed one of their own. And if Bryce isn't dead, then he's out there... a threat to us as well."

"We'll figure this out after we get Bracken cleared up. Once we have cuffs on the guy, I'll feel a lot better about everything. He's my first priority."

She sighed and when he glanced over at her; she turned her head away from him. Almost like she didn't want him to see what was in her eyes.

"Kate?" he murmured. Even though the command center was bustling with activity, he hooked her pinky with his and jiggled. She turned back to him and all of it was carefully gone from her face.

"I'm just... thinking about you," she murmured. "The tests."

"I know," he said softly. How it weighed on her. "I know, love, but the concussion is gone and the bruise is healing. That's fast, right? That's faster than normal people. I'm still super. You don't have to worry."

She nodded, gave him one of those sad smiles that made his heart ache, made him want to slay her dragons and lay the world at her feet. "Still super," she agreed. The smile lifted for a moment, wider and lighter, and she turned towards him in the middle of the room with everyone at their work stations around them. "Kiss me."

"What?" he laughed.

"Kiss me. Right here. How you want to kiss me."

"How do I want to kiss you?" he grinned.

"I can see it on your face, Rick Castle," she said back. Her fingers teased at his hip, stroking. "What you want to do to me."

"No, sweetheart. It's what I want to do _for_ you."

"Then kiss me."

So he leaned in and punished her mouth with his, taking even what she didn't want to offer, all of her anxiety and fear for him, all of the carefully held back reserve, sweeping it away with the force of his love for her.

They broke apart to catcalls and whistles, someone pounding him on the back, someone else saying something about _victory sex_, and Kate had her fingers against her lips like she could trap it and hold it forever. Her eyes were light as she watched him.

"That do you?" he said roughly, hearing the want in his voice.

"That will do me," she murmured. And then she reached out and touched those fingers to his lips as well, the caress more erotic and potent and beautiful than his kiss.

It was like saying good-bye.

* * *

Kate walked him down the block to the Range Rover, holding hands. His fingers were strong around hers, his palm so wide. Their shoulders brushed and he talked the whole way, his voice wrapping around her like armor, shoring her up. He'd admitted that he was feeling the cold in the tips of his fingers, but that it came and went.

It only solidified her decision.

At the car, when she lost the connection of his hand, she felt cast adrift. She couldn't help the way she was looking at him, couldn't help leaning out after him as he threw his bag into the backseat in that easy, cavalier manner he had.

Life was good for him. Even when it hadn't been, even when his father had been domineering and punishing and exacting, Castle had still thought life had been good - in his head. That was the thing she took from him like strength, that's what she drew from him when he was with her, that sense that life could be good no matter the circumstances.

And she was letting it go.

Because she knew better.

Life wasn't always good to her. She had to work to keep it.

"Hey," he murmured suddenly, his hand catching her hair and pushing it back. He cupped the side of her face and kissed her, little soft kisses, one after another, coming back for more again and again. "Hey, sweetheart. You're killing me."

She crashed into him, and he wrapped his arms around her and murmured against her ear.

"Hey, hey. Why the face? Just some tests. Not the end of the world."

"I know," she got out. "I know."

"Do you - did you want to come with me? I didn't think to ask..."

"No," she choked. "No, I can't - shouldn't. I won't."

He released her, his fingers running through her hair like she was four years old and needed the comfort, the safety of him. And maybe she did. For as long as she could get it, as long as he'd give it to her. She leaned her head into his touch and sighed.

"Hey, seriously, Kate. You're worrying me."

"No," she said, eyes flaring open. "Don't be worried. I'm fine. It's fine." She didn't want him to call it off and stay. He couldn't stay.

His brow furrowed and she didn't think he was all that convinced, so she remade her face, softened her mouth and came in closer to brush her lips to his. He never even resisted, he just dove into her kiss whole-heartedly, happy to have her, and she gripped him by his biceps and inhaled every bit of him she could.

When he nudged her away, she could hear his breathless grin, feel the clutch of his hands at her hip and her neck. She smiled for him, dusted that smile across his cheek to whisper in his ear.

"Love you, Rick. Be safe."

He sighed and nuzzled at her jaw, shook himself and stepped back. "Love you too. It'll only be the weekend. Be back before you know it."

He moved around the car and got inside, started the engine with a roar. She couldn't see inside the tinted windows, but she moved down the sidewalk, half following him as he pulled out of the space.

He was gone in a moment and she was alone with her terrible certainty.

It was time to go to Black.

* * *

Friday morning, Beckett opened the safe in the closet of the extra bedroom and pulled out the passport issued under one of her cover identities. Off the grid, the assumed name was one that Castle had arranged for her, something his father had never set eyes on. In case of emergency, he'd told her, and at the time she knew it was for disappearing. Never to return. Castle had one in a different name.

And there was a blank one. For a small child.

She ignored it.

Sasha whined at her heels and she reached down to scratch at the puppy's head, but she didn't have much time or attention left for sympathy. Her heart was a stone in her chest as she placed the passport in the inside pocket of her bag and swung that onto her shoulder.

She'd left her detective's notebook and the necklace here on the shelf, and to it she added the soft little stuffed elephant he'd given her for her birthday, the grey fur and the big sad eyes and the floppy ears. She'd found herself carrying it around, growing disgusted with herself and leaving it in whatever room she'd wandered into it, but now she closed the door on it.

Left it there for good.

She didn't expect Castle to ever be able to forgive her for this, though he might try. More than that, she wasn't sure she'd make it back.

She shrugged inside her jacket as she left the empty bedroom, her movements releasing the smell of him from her coat collar. She moved down the stairs quietly with the dog trailing after her, and the door bell rang.

She dropped the bag on the landing and glanced at Sasha, composing her face. When she had entered the keycode into the alarm and opened the door, her father waited patiently on the other side, giving her a long look.

"Thanks, Dad."

"I don't mind," he said easily. "I just thought you guys said you'd be laying low this year."

"We are. We were. Just - had something come up," she said. She couldn't lie to him, but she was carefully not explaining the situation. He was used to that though. "Castle needs my help."

Her father nodded tightly, as if that was all the explanation needed. And maybe it was. Maybe she could get by with that simple statement of truth. Castle needed her help.

And she was going to get it.

"Here's all her stuff," Kate said then, shaking herself out of it. She turned back for the puppy's leash and favorite pull toy, the old towel of Castle's that the dog liked to sleep with. She'd collected everything and put it in a grocery bag; she gave that now to her father.

"She'll be fine," her dad said. "She likes the woods. I'll be at the cabin all weekend."

Kate nodded; she'd figured as much. Hoped for it. "I should... I'll let you know when I'm back," she said tightly.

She didn't know when, how. She had no idea what awaited her off the coast of Tunisia. She only knew that the Station Keeper didn't seem to have it under control and that Black hated her with a consuming and deadly-logical passion.

She had destroyed everything Black had built for his life; she had taken his son from him.

And now she was heading straight into his hands.

She shivered and the dog whined at her, but Kate leaned over and rubbed her roughly, pressing nose to nose for those wet kisses. "Thank you, puppy. My sweet girl. You be good for my Dad."

When she lifted again, her father was drawing her into a fierce and crushing hug, his arms tight. "Don't be stupid, Katie."

"I'm not - I won't. I won't."

"Love you, kid. You know that. Even when - after your mother - I just..."

"Love you, Dad. I know. Don't worry."

"Fine, fine," Jim said gruffly. "I got your baby. We'll leave so you can go. Airport?"

"Taking a cab. I'm fine." She snaked the leash out of the bag and hooked it on Sasha's collar, handed everything over to her father. "Thank you."

"Any time. Come on, Sash. You're with me."

Sasha gave Kate one last backward look and whined, tail tucked down, but she followed Jim out the door and down the street. Kate watched them until her father got into his truck, the dog up front, and then she closed the door and took up her own bag.

A cab to the airport, her cover passport, and a flight to Tunisia. She palmed her phone and stared at it a long moment, gave in and texted him.

_At the Office. Text me if you need anything._

Just in case. Just in case.

Time to leave.

She realized with a sickening sink to her stomach that today was Valentine's Day and she was leaving him.

* * *

There was only one direct flight to Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, from New York's JFK International and it left at eight o'clock that Friday morning. She didn't expect to be able to hide from Black, to at all fly in under his radar, so she didn't even attempt it. In the last four years, Kate Beckett had undermined and destroyed four decades of Agent Black's work. She knew - without a doubt - he'd find her anywhere.

So she'd save her energy for fighting for Castle's life.

Tunisia, the smallest country in North Africa, held a CIA listening station off its northern coast, a supposedly isolated and secure facility where Castle had sent his father under house arrest. The young democracy had ousted their leader in 2011 and installed their first free elections, so it wasn't like the assignment was a dead end or boring. She had no idea what had happened to the Station Keeper, but she could imagine.

Black was a smooth talker, and he'd been in power longer than Castle had been alive. Reynolds was a likeable guy, from what Kate remembered of him, but he'd been on Castle's team back when Black had been in charge. He might have been persuaded, even duped, by the man now.

Even if she had attempted to enter the country by guile, even if she had done so by stealth, Black would have known she was coming and found her anyway. At least now she didn't waste a whole week's worth of travel on obfuscation; she had the weekend and she needed it to be done by then.

Whatever happened happened.

So, of course, it didn't take long.

With the long flight and the time change, the day was gone when she arrived at nearly ten that night. Tunis was an invigorating flux of French European and Ottoman styles, a culture both colorful and drab, severely religious and also moderately liberated. A Roman amphitheater spread across from a domed mosque; the great throne hall with its gold-leafed walls and rococo design was sandwiched within a district market. She had just left the airport center and headed on foot for a stand of cabs, the massive mountain in the blue-hazed distance, the smell of the Mediterranean in her nose, when the black SUV pulled up at the sidewalk and blocked her way.

That it was Deleware who opened the back door, that it was Deleware who pointed the gun at her shocked her to her core.

"Del-?"

"Get in."

Somehow this made it worse, made her feel sick to her stomach as she slowly stepped towards the SUV. A man at her left took her bag and patted her down, stripped her of the jacket she'd had to sling over her arm; a man on her right steadily pressed his fingers into her spine to hustle her forward.

She put a foot on the running board and felt the goon now running his hands over her ass, coldly, professionally, plucking her phone from her back pocket and tossing it to the ground. He smashed the heel of his boot into the face of her phone and her heart fluttered with hope when the protective case held. And then the goon brought his foot up once more and crunched the phone just like that, the back popping open and the screen splintering in a thousand spiderwebs. It flared to life, a message just received that Kate could see from where she was perched - half in and half out of the SUV.

It had been from Castle.

And then her phone was in pieces and Deleware was giving a guttural command to the driver, and the guy who had taken her luggage was shoving her inside the vehicle. The man handed over Beckett's passport to Deleware and the former CIA analyst rifled through it slowly. It felt like he was reading all of her most intimate stories, the things Castle whispered to her at night when they made love, all the hope for a future contained in that one small book.

Deleware slid the passport into his jacket pocket but his gun never wavered.

She sat back stiffly, hands like ice, and saw as they pulled away that her luggage and jacket had been abandoned on the sidewalk in the darkness.

* * *

Rick Castle tried to keep still as the MRI machine banged and heaved around his head. His eyes were closed and he'd messaged Kate that - at four in the afternoon - it was his third of the day, that it was easy, but in reality, the sharp sense of the enclosed space was slow to leave him.

Trapped.

They were doing a wide range of scans focused on defining the most active regions of his brain during a variety of states. The last MRI had projected images of violence and death and global catastrophe on the round, white tube just above his head; all he'd had to do was watch. His brain had kicked on, of course, and he'd gotten deep into contingency plans and evacuation procedures and ready response and worldwide mobilization by the time the scan was done - four hours later.

It was exhausting. And though he wasn't required to do anything at all for this scan, even though he could drift and fall asleep, that worm of anxiety crawled in under his weariness.

He wanted out of here.

But he'd stay. Because they needed to know what the regimen had done to him, because Kate couldn't sleep at night, because this was what it took to stay on top of this thing, to make sure that his misshapen red blood cells and his extra oxygen and whatever else might be genetically tampered with didn't somehow also kill him.

He wouldn't do that to her. God, not another person abandoning her. She couldn't take it; he'd seen what that had done to her when he'd faked his death, and it just wasn't survivable. Not for her.

So he endured the MRI machine and its clattering and knocking, the way every loud clamor felt like someone breaking down the walls of his mental panic room and getting inside his head, tearing things apart in there. He'd lived through years of testing and prodding and endurance and conditioning, so it wasn't like it was new for him. He had just assumed he'd left it behind him when he quit toeing his father's line.

But if this was what Kate needed, if this kept him going strong, then he'd deal.

He'd figure out how to deal.

Logan's voice came in over the mic in the tube, Logan himself probably in the next room observing. "Hey, Castle. Man, this one's supposed to be at rest. Stop thinking so much."

Castle would've laughed but it'd ruin the results, so he closed his eyes and forced out the noise, the hot confines of the tube, and the great unknowns that still loomed before him. Whatever his body did or didn't do, whatever was mucking up his blood, whatever injections or pills he might need to take for the rest of his life - none of that mattered.

That was far away from here. Here was Kate. Here was his wife and the life they were building together. Here was Kate and the curl of her fingers around his hip, the way she slid her body over his in the darkness of their bedroom, the brush of her mouth as she both smiled and kissed him, the hum of contentment when she found him awake as well.

Today was Valentine's Day, and he'd wanted to do something special, something sweet and solitary with her, the two of them. But he supposed the best gift he could give her was his health, as lame and tired as that was, and so he was stuck in a tube getting an MRI.

For her.

At rest. At rest. He was supposed to be at rest.

Well, with Kate, he finally could be at rest.

* * *

She was not afraid. She was not afraid.

She was not afraid.

If she chanted it to herself long enough, maybe she'd believe it. Maybe her heart would stop pounding like a craven thing, maybe her palms wouldn't sweat, maybe her thigh muscles wouldn't quiver like a bow strung too tightly.

The SUV had stopped at the end of a long, concrete dock. She was not told to get out, but Deleware and the two men held a quick conversation outside while the driver remained with her in the vehicle. He had a scar behind his ear that she couldn't fathom, but she found herself fixating on anyway. How he got it, why, who he'd pissed off or assaulted to get it.

She pressed her hands to her knees and fought for deeper breaths, faintly surprised that a panic attack hadn't overwhelmed her. If any time was the time for panic, it was now.

No weapon, no passport, no luggage, no phone, no one knew where she'd gone. She had to make it to Black - had to at least get the chance to see him, face to face, to beg for Castle's life. The regimen.

The door opened and Deleware stepped back. "Maine, you're with us," he said to the driver. And then to her, "Come."

"Where are you taking me?" she said. Her voice was low but she wasn't quiet. She scanned the wharf but they were alone at the end of the dock, a small craft tied up to the pylon and bobbing in the water. Two men with guns were on the prow, waiting on them, and the man at her back nudged her forward.

"Go."

One word phrases, the resolute lack of conversation or explanation - it didn't bode well. They were trained militia, hired guns who knew better than to engage their captive. She darted a glance down the dock, towards where people and other boats teemed the shore, but they were too far.

And, she realized dully, she didn't _want_ to escape them. They were taking her to Black on that island listening station, and she had to see him. She'd rather have done it on her own terms; she'd rather have caught a cab to the docks and hired a boat like she'd planned. She would have rather shown up at the listening station and demanded the Keeper let her inside to talk with his prisoner, but she knew - she had known - it wasn't going to play out like that.

Deleware gestured her towards the boat. "Step over."

She had to time the slow swell of the water so that she made the jump on her feet. The others piled in after her, easily, even as the two guards kept their guns on her. She still had her hands free, but she assumed that had only been so she could get onboard and they wouldn't have to carry her.

Sure enough, Deleware nodded his head towards a low door and she ducked inside, found a blank and cramped room that looked like the pilothouse. The driver from the car who'd been called Maine grabbed her by the wrist in a bruising grip, but she bit her tongue and flared her nostrils to keep from crying out. He bound her wrists behind her back roughly with a sailor's expert knots, no slippage, no loose ends, and then he pushed her down on the floor.

She felt the sick crunch of her knee against the heavy-duty metal of the floor, listed to one side to let her shoulder take her weight against the wall. The flare of pain in her knee subsided with effort, and she inched down to sit as best she could.

Deleware came inside. "A forty-five minute boat ride," he said. The gun was held easily at his side, his movements more natural and far less fumbling than he'd been as an analyst in Castle's unit.

He'd been an inside man all along, no doubt. His hesitancy, his mild rebellions against Black - all intended to create a sense of little brother kinship with Castle. She watched him check his phone, but even in his distraction, he was still totally and completely in control. Aware.

"To Black," she said then. "You mean you're taking me to him."

Deleware lifted his gaze to her and she saw she'd been right; he had nothing of the soft-waisted desk jockey in his eyes. "Of course," he said calmly. "Who else?"

At least there was that. Black was better than whatever other factions might be raging through this small, newly-democratic nation. She'd seen what had happened to the man who'd gone to Cairo in Castle's place, what they'd done to his body. If she was going to die, it had damn well better be under her terms. For her purposes. For Castle.

"What happens next?" she asked Deleware.

"When we arrive, we'll see what happens." He shrugged and then gave her a smile that made her bones freeze. "Good to see you again, Kate. Too bad you weren't a smarter agent."

Her mind blanked, snow white and terrible in its roaring silence, but Deleware was already heading out the door.

Whatever else, it was too late; she was here now.

Nothing left to do but face the beast in his lair - live or die.


	10. Chapter 10

**Close Encounters 13**

* * *

Castle rubbed the back of his neck as Logan handed him the radioactive dye. "Smells foul."

Logan grinned. "It's berry flavored."

"Gross." But Castle bottoms-upped and swallowed it down, wincing as the flavor remained chalky on his tongue.

"Want your phone?" Logan asked. "I can let you have it for a few minutes."

"Yeah," he croaked. He closed his eyes to keep from upchucking the whole barium smoothie - it was so nasty - and he felt Logan smack his shoulder with his phone.

"Here. Quick."

Castle cracked open an eye and grabbed for his phone, relieved. She hadn't messaged him back yet, but he sent her another text saying everything was good, handed it back to Logan. He was kind of glad Kate wasn't leaving him anxious voice mails or repeated messages asking about the results. He didn't yet know how to have that conversation, what to say to her.

Threkeld didn't seem as eager and optimistic as he had at the beginning of all this.

"Don't worry about it," Logan said. "We'll figure this out. We're in touch with some of the most advanced research in the country."

"Yeah, I'm not worried," he said, shaking it off. He was, but he wasn't really worried about himself. They'd figure it out. He'd always entrusted his health and conditioning to the CIA professionals; he'd always stuck to the plan and it had paid off. He'd wanted to be more than the machine, and he _was _now, and he couldn't really fathom how that could be taken away from him.

But Kate. He wasn't sure how she'd react to the idea that things were less than... easy. It wasn't going to be a matter of having a few tests run and taking extra iron supplements like he'd sort of hoped.

"Did Boyd say about... you know, fertility?" Castle asked finally.

"Tests are good - motility, all that. Though he did suggest that if you do have a kid - it should probably undergo genetic testing. Just to be sure."

"Oh," he murmured, swallowing against the taste in his mouth. At least there was that.

He'd tell Kate that first. Good news first.

"You ready?" Logan said. "Here's the last of it."

Castle took the last berry-flavored radioactive dye and swigged it as fast as he could.

He was ready for this day to be over with.

He was ready to go home.

Some Valentine's Day.

* * *

Kate shivered and pressed back against the wall when Deleware came into the small room. She was cold without her jacket; the wind blasted through the little space and made goose bumps rise on her neck. Her arms were bound behind her and beginning to throb, the whole position awkward and cramped inside the pilot-house.

"Well, Kate, you impress me," Deleware said, talking casually, hand on his weapon like it was merely an extension of himself. Aware but also unaware, in control but easy with the power. She couldn't believe he'd been so good at fooling them all, acting like a brown-noser and complete incompetent in the field.

"Impress you," she echoed. She couldn't help but be impressed herself. Deleware had been a rat right under their noses. For years. Before she had ever met Castle. She tried to sit up straighter, but her fingers were swelling and pounding painfully. "Why are you impressed?"

Deleware shrugged. "Thought you'd be dead long before now."

She closed her mouth and kept her eyes off of him, wouldn't give him the power of reading her. She shut down, drained all of it right out of her, gone.

Deleware kept talking. "You know, when he first started fucking you, I thought it'd be the same old, same old."

Black was behind this; she could feel it in every word, in the very tone. He wanted to play games with her head, even still. There was no malice in Deleware's voice, not even that much interest. He was following instructions.

"But you stuck around. You had His son eating crap Chinese and waffles with syrup. I mean, really."

The hair rose on the back of her neck, her heart stilled. The way Deleware said _his_, like it was a capital letter. Like Black was a god.

"You do know Richard's CIA place was wired for picture and sound, right? I mean, I assume you knew that every time you fucked, we had it on camera."

Her mouth opened to fight back, but she pressed her arms hard against the wall instead, pushed until she felt pain blossom in her shoulders. And she said nothing.

"I was the one who had to preview all those endless hours of tape. You guys are kinky as fuck."

She said nothing. Absolutely nothing. Black wanted to screw with her, it would take more than some comments about her love life.

"I had to write reports, telling Agent Black what I'd seen and heard. He couldn't stomach the work himself. Good for you, I guess. I'd tell him when Agent Castle came up with a new stupid pet name, baby and sweetheart and love spewed all over the place."

Her heart was pounding so hard that her blood was boiling, seething. The pulse in her arms was so hard that it rocked her forward with every beat. She was going to make him hurt. She didn't know how or where or when, but she was going to make Deleware _hurt._

"I'd have to write down every sick thing you did to each other. Every round with handcuffs or the black hood from the Office, that time on the kitchen counter when you spread maple syrup-"

"Shut the fuck up," she growled, closing her eyes. She pulsed with it, every heartbeat, and it was a struggle to keep it from spilling out.

"I never got cameras in your place, though - your apartment before it blew. We never thought we'd need them. Imagine Agent Black's surprise when you two came back from a mission _engaged_."

"Married," she spit out, couldn't help herself. "We were married."

"Whatever."

She growled and closed her mouth, bit down on her lip and sucked at the blood that pooled, used its bitter, metallic taste to remind herself of why she was here. The regimen.

"He's done everything in his power to make Agent Castle into his own image, and here you are, fucking everything up. How do you think this is going to go down, Kate? You think he'd really let you live?"

She lifted her head to Deleware, remembered the man who hadn't wanted to step up, who had been a genius with the computers but such an idiot with a weapon. "You really think he'll let _you_ live?" Nothing changed behind his eyes but she saw the tick of his jaw. "He won't kill me. If he ever wants Castle to even remotely fall into line - ever again - then killing me is the last thing he should do."

Deleware smiled. "I see you're betting on Black." His lips pulled back from his teeth and the inhumanity in his eyes made her body shiver. "I wouldn't, if I were you. He's less practical than you think."

Deleware stood and started moving for the door - and in that moment, she had one opportunity.

She took it, striking out fast with both feet, catching Deleware in the groin with the sharp points of her shoes. He grunted and fell back, but as he did, he raised the gun perfectly, easily, and the shot went off with a crash in the room.

It was tumultuous and cacophonous inside her head, burning and sharp, and when she could see, when her eyes opened, she realized her neck and the side of her head was hot with blood.

"I grazed you," he said. His voice was too calm, too level for the kick she'd just given him. "It will bleed a lot. Keep you weak, but it won't kill you. If I'd wanted to, it was only a matter of millimeters, Beckett. So don't be stupid."

And then he left.

Her head was on fire.

* * *

Late Saturday night, Castle finally woke and realized he'd passed out sometime after that last round of tests. He rolled onto his side in bed, stretching and yawning, moved to scoop up his phone.

Esposito had messaged that the senator's Chief of Staff was in holding and being given careful treatment. Mitch had updated him as well. Castle composed a message to them both, suggested they keep tabs on the Chief of Staff's mistress, and then he dropped his phone back to the bedside table.

He was officially done, but it was late. Maybe he should get a good night's sleep and head out in the morning. He felt wrung out from the barium, but the imaging stress test hadn't shown any defects in his heart or vascular system. Boyd had gotten excited about _something_ he'd seen though, and the two doctors plus Logan had been tossing off theories and looking up research papers even as Castle had sacked out.

He should sleep, but he wanted to tell Kate the news. She hadn't called him yet, and he figured this was a face-to-face thing anyway, explaining about the regimen and what his body seemed to require to function properly.

Castle sighed and got out of bed, taking his phone once more, heading back out into the hall. Threkeld and Boyd had a kind of lab and office down at the other end, past the kitchen, so Castle headed that direction. He'd see what they thought and then head home. He'd promised Kate not to keep her in the dark, even if the news wasn't as positive as he'd thought.

Threkeld was in the kitchen making a late dinner when Castle passed, so he backed up and went inside. "Hey, Doc."

"Agent Castle. I'm glad you're here. Eggs."

"I'm fine," he said, shaking his head at the scrambled eggs. He'd had his share of those here.

But Threkeld insisted. "No, it wasn't a question. You need twice as much protein, and we're thinking a lot more cholesterol as well. Lipoprotein levels in your blood ought to be higher."

Castle sighed and took the plate of eggs that Threkeld held out to him. "You think we can control this by adjusting my diet?" he asked. Though he didn't hold out much hope.

"Well, actually. There are two factors at play here - one is your distinctive blood cells and two is your recent dose of those injections."

"Those are two separate things?"

"For our purposes, yes. Because it seems the injections were never supposed to be taken alone. So we're trying to balance it out with whatever might have been in those supplemental pills you used to take."

Castle stared down at his eggs. "Ah, I see."

"Secondary to our research is your unique... system. Your heart does seem to be more overworked than a usual man's, but you've developed a larger heart muscle. Most likely due to those red blood cells and the oxygen - but we won't get into that."

"Can you tell me more about what that means long-term?" he asked, shoveling eggs into his mouth. This was the part he'd have to find a way to explain to Beckett.

"Long-term. Long-term." Threkeld sighed and sank back against the counter beside Castle. He didn't have any plate at all, so apparently the eggs had been a midnight snack for Rick instead. "Well, you know we told you that you'd need stabilizers for the rest of your life?"

He nodded, and the scrambled eggs were like ash in his mouth.

"We're starting to see signs that it might be possible to wean you from them. Eventually. If we compensate correctly. If we do it slowly. Not cold turkey like you did four years ago. And not - not if you continue to need the injections. Which might spoil things, since that's what creates the - ah - 'super' effect."

"But I wouldn't _have_ to have the injections, the regimen, right?"

"Parts of the regimen you may be forced to continue," Threkeld answered. He gave a wide shrug of his shoulders. "I'm an infectious disease doctor and I'm looking at your body's immune system responses - for the most part. Dr Boyd has been integrating my findings with what that means for the rest of you. But I'm reasonably certain I can prevent another super bug."

His lungs deflated in relief. Castle scrubbed a hand down his face and glanced over at Threkeld. "That's - good to hear. Very good to hear."

"Of course, it means certain things have to change."

"Like what?"

"More protein, more cholesterol. Those lipoproteins. Something about them is different, not just your red blood cells. Cholesterol creates Vitamin D, hormones. It makes me wonder if the regimen hasn't hijacked your lipoproteins to do more than that. Or excessive amounts. I don't know. Hard to say. Something about your mitochondria too, but those functions are a mystery on so many levels that unraveling it all will be... a lifetime's work."

"Eat more eggs? I can do that," Castle said easily, choosing to focus on what he understood. "I mean, that's completely do-able."

"The supplements. In the not too distant future, we're going to need to find those. We're going to have to use them to modify a course of treatment for you."

"I don't have the supplements," he grit out.

"I know. But think of it like a maintenance plan. You change the oil, you replace the dirty filters, and you're going to keep in good running order. So you eat your eggs, you take those supplements..."

Like a machine.

"But we really need to study those supplements. We need to find a way to replicate those elements and reintroduce them to your body. For instance, your mitochondria are the powerhouses of your cells, and yet it's possible that yours are fueling you with quite a different kind of power."

"Super," he grunted.

"Only - not any longer. Not since you stopped taking those pills and the injections. And your lipoproteins are supposed to be aiding in your red blood cells' functioning - some function unknown to us - and we can't discover what you're missing until we know what you're supposed to have."

"I got it," he said slowly, dragging his fork through the eggs. "You need the rest of the regimen."

"Soon."

He gripped his fork and put the plate down, the scrambled eggs sitting heavy in his stomach. "Right. You guys need me for the rest of this?"

"No, Agent Castle. Not at all. You go on home, if you like. I'll email you the results of our findings, and if you could come back in six weeks, we'll see how the diet changes have affected your lipoproteins. And hopefully, we'll know more about those supplements."

Castle nodded, remembered just in time to shake the man's hand and express his gratitude. "Sincerely," he said. "Thank you. I appreciate your taking the time away from your usual practice, your family, to help me out."

"Any time, Agent Castle. And that's sincere as well."

* * *

Beckett clawed to consciousness, jerking awake. She groaned as pain stabbed hot and vicious down her side, collapsing back to one elbow as her movements were arrested by the jerk of handcuffs.

A boat, bound and trussed - Black.

Ah, shit. She had to get with it, had to orient.

She felt the scratch of an army-issue blanket under her cheek and gingerly tested her restraints. Her forearms were no longer bound, but her wrists were shackled to the bedframe of a cot and the darkness pressed heavy around her.

Not on a boat any longer - no swell of waves under her. Kate cleared her throat and listened to the way the sound bounced, sensed that the space was cinderblock and narrow, much like the interrogation rooms at the 12th.

No matter how hard she strained, she couldn't make out even a crack of light under a doorway, but there was something thick and crusty over her right eye, made her hurt to try to open her lid.

Kate pressed her knees into the thin mattress and took a quick breath, pushed off to sit upright again.

Ah, fuck, her head.

She mewled and her body betrayed her, swaying to one side again and falling back to the mattress. Her cheek against the blanket, Kate closed her eyes - her eye - and took in slow lungfuls of air, trying to push past the pain.

Everything ached inside her head. A star was collapsing behind her right eye and hollowing her out.

She groaned and even sound made reverberations beat back at her. Her arms throbbed and her head pulsed and her cheekbone and jaw were on fire.

Then the lights flickered on, slow-warming halogen recessed in the ceiling above her. Kate slitted her eye and tried to scan the room, but the brutal ache was like a supernova against the side of her face and she caught only snatches: a two-way mirror, the cot, something like a toilet in one corner, the door just in front of her.

"Ms Beckett."

The voice over the intercom made her flinch and she cursed at that instinctive response just the sound of his father's voice had over her.

"Ms Beckett, you didn't do as I asked."

She licked her lips and tried to think of something to say, do, a way to get him to listen.

But then the lights snapped off and she was plunged into darkness once more.

She was glad for it. She wasn't sure she could hold up her end of the conversation they needed to have.

* * *

Rick Castle knew something was wrong the moment he stepped into his house on Broome Street.

No Sasha. No Kate.

And while it was common for Kate to go running at all hours of the night and take the dog with her if she was alone, what he didn't like was the absolute stillness in the house. The sense of abandonment.

His guts clenched as he shut the door behind him, and then he mounted the stairs two at a time.

He didn't call her name; it was three in the morning and she could be asleep in their bedroom, and he told himself that was the reason. Told himself it was because he didn't want to wake her (not because he couldn't bear to hear the emptiness echo).

When he passed the extra bedroom, the door was open but there was no dog. Striding quickly now, he ate up the length of the hall and pushed open their bedroom door and stopped short.

The bed was made.

She wasn't out for a run because she'd had a sleepless night without him. She'd never gone to bed in the first place.

Castle jerked his phone out of his pocket, punched in the passcode with an aggressive jab of his finger. He scanned the alerts but she'd said nothing other than that one text sent nearly twenty-four hours ago.

He called her number and pressed the phone against his ear, strode back through the hall and jogged down the stairs, chanting her name under his breath as if that would make her pick up.

She didn't pick up.

Castle redialed and moved swiftly through the living room, into the kitchen, yanked open the basement door. The alarm system was supposed to alert him if the panic room door shut and sealed but sometimes Sasha did it on accident, and maybe - he didn't know - maybe Kate had reconfigured the settings while he was gone.

The panic room door was open. He reached inside and flipped on the light and his phone buzzed against his ear, giving him an alert that the light was on.

He shut off the light and it buzzed again, and still Kate didn't answer his call. It went to voice mail again and he wondered if that was the right amount of rings for an active phone or if her battery had died. He called her office line and listened to it ring forever into nothing.

No answer.

Castle ran back through the living room and up the stairs again, taking the steps two at a time even as he called Mitchell. She'd been at the Office she said; maybe an open case and her phone had died and she wasn't at the desk but was sitting in on the Chief of Staff interrogation.

Mitchell picked up after two rings. "Hey. It's late man. What the hell?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm in bed, you asshole. It's three in the morning. You didn't expect us to seriously work him round the clock, did you?"

"Work who - right, no. Not - I'm just looking for Beckett."

"Isn't she with you?"

"With... me?"

"She said she was heading to Stone Farm, not to worry if she didn't respond to the memos because she was... I guess that's a no."

"She didn't make it to Stone Farm," Castle said hollowly. He sank down at the top of the stairs, weakness swamping him. "She didn't - she never showed up."

"Had she any tails following her lately? Any-"

"No," Castle rasped. "Nothing. I've been careful of her. I've been... nothing. Mitchell."

"Okay, all right. I'm up. Let me call around to the guys first, see if they knew when she planned on heading out there."

Castle glanced down to the empty living room, something pulsing hotly in his veins. "The dog is gone."

"What?"

"She... Sasha isn't here."

"Well. Uh. Did she send her to Carrie. Or maybe her dad?"

"If she - if she was just coming up to get me, then she wouldn't have..." Castle trailed off and scrubbed his hand down his face. "No, this makes no sense. She has no car to get anywhere. She - I'll - let me check the tapes for the front door. Maybe a cab picked her up."

"Yeah, you do that. Check your alarm system's playback and I'll call the guys and we'll figure this out, Castle."

Rick hung up before Mitchell was even finished talking and he hauled himself down the stairs once more. Through the kitchen, down the wooden steps, and into the basement. His phone alerted him the moment he shut the door behind himself and the monitors inside the room flared to life.

Castle sank down at the small station and started scrubbing back through the tapes. He'd get the medallion number of the cab that picked her up and then he'd find out who the hell had kidnapped his wife.


	11. Chapter 11

**Close Encounters 13**

* * *

His voice was close when it came, intimate. Like he was speaking right in her ear. "This was my holding cell, you know. Where my son dumped me after everything in Russia."

Beckett struggled in the darkness but her arms were hopelessly behind her back, thrusting her chest forward and her knees into an awkward position perched on the thin mattress.

"This was where he left me," Black said again. Only this time she realized he really _was_ close. He was inside the room with her. "This is the narrow Army cot that I had to sleep on."

Her skin crawled but she fought to hide her revulsion, instead pushed against her knees and away from the voice. In the darkness, she caught a sudden flash of shadow against the deeper black, and she knew it was the space where he _wasn't_; she knew he himself was the deeper black.

"Do you like it, Kate?"

And just like that, her fear broke. Shattered in a thousand, unrecoverable pieces so that all that was left inside her was weary and final fatigue. "I don't care," she sighed.

"I think you care quite a lot."

His hand came to the wound at the side of her head, and she gasped, felt the ricochet of pain rattling in her jaw.

"He was not supposed to do that. He tells me it was a warning shot but you moved."

It took her a moment to get her breath back, the pitch black of the room pressing into her lungs, but the fear was gone. There was just exhaustion and pain and the futility of fighting against him. She didn't want to fight against him; he had what she needed.

"I don't care," she said finally.

"I care. I require him to fulfill his job to my exacting standards."

"Fine," she sighed. "Can we get on with this?"

The lights burned on, and she winced, closing her eyes against it. She heard him moving back to her but couldn't bring herself to look. A touch of wet cold against her neck and then burning heat and she gasped, jerking backwards and falling to one shoulder on the cot.

"Hold still." She opened her eye and saw the gauze pad in his hands, his fingers shaped so like Castle's that it made her stomach flip. The alcohol burned as it cleaned, a deep burn, and then he was running the guaze around her eye where the blood had crusted.

She squeezed her lids closed tightly to keep the alcohol out, but still it stung and made her eyes water, tears leaking down her face.

She wondered if that was the point.

"There. At least now I don't have to look at that."

She opened her eyes and they ran, and even though it was just the alcohol fumes, there was something about the release that made the tears begin to be real, and furious, and unstoppable. Crying on her knees in front of his father.

Power games. It was always about him asserting some kind of power over her - but that was because he _had_ no power over her. "Can we get on with this?" she said again. Even through the tears as they ran down her cheeks. Her tone was flat, her voice held none of the breaking. "You know what I'm here for."

He remained standing over her, dressed impeccably as always, and she saw that whatever rehab he'd been in these last six months had begun to help. His face was no longer so twisted, his eyes both closed correctly. She wondered if the handicap had been put on in Russia, if that had been part of the act.

"He left me here to rot because of you," Black said then.

"Right, well. Can't say I'm sorry for that. So do whatever you need to do to feel like the big man again. And then after that can we finally start talking about how you can save your son?"

Black's face torqued, and she saw now how carefully he'd been controlling it, how the muscle tics came back when he was agitated, how he couldn't quite achieve the affable, unaffected man of power around her.

She had him by the balls and they both knew it. She might be the one handcuffed to his _bed_ but she had all the power here because she had Castle.

Black growled and jerked around for the door, slamming it shut after himself.

But he turned the lights out as he left and she was swallowed in darkness once more.

She might have had Castle once, but coming here to Black knowing full well the man wanted her dead... she wasn't sure she still had Castle.

She might not have him at all.

* * *

"We've piggy-backed the taxi company's networks and we're tracing it now," Mitchell said over the phone.

Castle played back through the last few minutes of the digital recording. "Her dad got Sasha," he replied. "So she knew she wouldn't be here for at least the night. It shows her with a bag too."

"Yeah. Okay, let's see. That cab clocked in at... oh. JFK."

"The airport?" he growled. "What the hell is she doing at the airport?"

"Getting a flight?" Mitchell deadpanned. But it wasn't funny. "Look, I'll run her name and aliases into the passenger lists and see what we get."

"Do it now," Castle said. "While I'm on the phone."

But even as Mitchell got to it on the other end, Castle was heading out of the panic room and up the stairs. Aliases. He hadn't thought to check; he'd assumed something had happened to her.

Upstairs on the second floor, Castle opened his office safe and rifled through the contents. All her aliases were intact though.

"Castle? No hits," Mitch said. "We got nothing. She may have just been throwing someone off her tail."

"Would she have gone to Warsaw?" he asked, staring into the box where he kept their aliases. "Because of Mason."

"You think? Let me eye-scan those myself. Hold on."

Castle pushed the top back on the box and slid it inside the wall safe. Beckett knew he wouldn't leave Mason to swing. And Mitchell had gone there himself to clean up the mess Mason had made; he'd thought the whole thing was closed.

He sank down to his desk chair and stared at the flat expanse of the secure laptop. Castle had a nagging suspicion it was more than that - or something altogether different. Hadn't he thought they'd been talking at cross-purposes for weeks now? Every comment was shaded with new meaning; her demand for a kiss in the command center...

Castle jerked to his feet and jogged down the hallway, phone gripped tightly in his hand. He pushed into the empty bedroom and yanked open the closet door to get at his safe.

His guts spilled out.

On the shelf which hid his second safe - the one that included their go-bags and their new names should the need ever arise - lay three items.

Her detective's notebook, the necklace he'd given her for Christmas, and the baby elephant. All things he wanted to give her - had given her - and she'd left them purposefully behind.

"Castle?" It buzzed from somewhere around his chest where he was gripping the phone so tightly. "Castle, man, you there? I didn't find her."

He put the phone to his ear and breathed. "I - I have to let you go."

"Did you find something?"

"I don't know," he rasped. "I have to let you go."

Castle's hand fell to his side as he stared at those treasures, and his nerveless fingers dropped the phone. He heard it bounce and clatter on the wood floor and turned mechanically to look for it.

Only to be confronted by a flurry of multi-colored index cards and a murder board painstakingly erected on the inside of the closet door.

No. Not a murder board, but a timeline.

Castle's timeline. These were - every story he'd told her, every detail of his life - holy fuck, she'd even photocopied pages from that detective's notebook and pasted them up in chronological order, his own words echoing back at him, names and places circled in red or highlighted in yellow.

Everything he'd told her, just notes on a timeline.

He swallowed hard and turned back to the closet, mindlessly fumbled at the safe, pushing past the too-soft elephant to get his fingers around the dial. He yanked it open and put his hand into its dark recesses, felt the edges of his passport.

But only his passport. Not hers.

He let out a groan and pulled everything out, all of it, causing the necklace to drop over the side of the shelf, the links clattering one after another at the edge. The packets were compromised, the tape peeled back but she hadn't taken any money, hadn't taken the birth certificate and license and other things. Just the passport.

Everything else was still there.

She'd also left the baby elephant, and his stories in the notebook, and his mark on that coin necklace - she'd left those pieces of him here for safe-keeping.

Oh, God. Kate.

What had she done?

* * *

She had thought her fear broken beyond repair; she had thought she'd been pushed out past the reaches of that icy terror.

But with the phone to her ear and the darkness still around her and Black so close, so close, in that creeping stillness, she wanted to scream.

The phone rang and rang and she hoped he wouldn't answer. She had no idea what time of day it was or even which day it was, and maybe he was still at Stone Farm, maybe Logan had his phone while they did the tests, maybe it was at the Office and he'd gone to-

"Who is this?"

Castle. Oh, God.

"Me," she croaked, heard the blood in her voice. "It's me."

"_Kate_. God, where are you - what did you do? Where-"

Black yanked the phone away. "This is your father," he said quietly. "Guess who showed up on my doorstep to borrow a cup of sugar?"

Kate closed her eyes and didn't know what was worse: the idea that Castle would come for her or the thought that he might not.

He might not. She'd done - unthinkable. Unforgiveable. She'd put herself here and now Castle was having to deal with his father, deal with _her_ consequences.

Suddenly she heard his voice through the dark air, realized Black had put it on speaker so that she'd hear his response.

"-you even _fucking touch her_-"

"Richard," Black interrupted smoothly. "Your wife came to me. She did this."

"You don't touch her. You hear me? You don't-"

"Can we dispense with the idle threats? I've got her and you don't."

The silence made her ache.

"Much better," Black said. His voice was oil in the darkness. "Now. You need something from me which I am prepared to provide. So long as I get something from you in return."

"If you hurt her, you get nothing from me. Do you understand?"

"I understand more than you know. I have Beckett. I have the power here."

Kate could hear Castle breathing, could _feel_ his rage from thousands of miles away. It was like he was in the room with them, like his fingers were gripping the back of her neck.

He was furious with her. He was never going to forgive her for this.

"Your wife came to _me_," Black said fiercely. "She chose this. I didn't force her; I didn't even blackmail her. I didn't have to do anything at all."

"Castle," she rasped, trying to lift her voice over his. "Castle, don't-"

"She came to me, Richard. Because I have what you need."

"I want nothing to do with you," Castle growled. She heard his impossible rage, heard every word directed at _her_ because she had done this to him. She had put Black back into their lives; she had brought him to the wolf again.

"You need me."

"All I _need_ is my wife. You let her go, you _let her go_."

"You need me. Not her. I made you who you are. I _made_ you. But then you took up with her - and you see what happens? See how it destroys you, unmakes you? You need that regimen."

Kate swallowed and bowed her head. True, it was true. He needed it and Black had it, and what else was there to do? There was no other choice. This wasn't how she'd intended for it to go - she'd meant it to be a deal between her and him, but now he was bringing Castle into it. Tormenting him because of her.

"As a sign of good faith," Black continued. "I'm going to release your wife."

Kate jerked her head up and strained her eyes through the darkness. She gasped when the touch came, expected but soft, the feel of his fingers at her wrists laid over with the sensation and impression of her husband. Their hands were the same, so much the same.

"Beckett. Tell him."

The cuffs fell off and the lights came on. Kate worked her throat and brought her aching arms around, wrapped her fingers at the raw place where the metal had bruised.

"_Kate_," she heard from the phone. Black was holding it out to her.

She raised her hand and took it, and Black stepped away. The door buzzed and clicked open and she put her foot to the floor, unsteady.

"Kate? Kate, baby, please-"

"I'm here," she rasped. Her voice sounded like she'd been screaming.

"Kate, Kate, God, what's going on? Where are you? Why-"

"Tell him, Kate," Black said to her. Knowledge was fierce and triumphant on his face.

She tested it, taking another step towards the door, but the way was clear, the cuffs gone. She hesitated in the doorway, looking down the hall, and heard Castle in her ear, begging.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, closing her eyes. "I need you."

"_Kate_."

"I need you to come. He won't give us the regimen until he talks to you. Face to face. I need you, Castle."

"Why are you _doing_ this?"

"Please," she groaned. "Please."

"Did he hurt you? Is he making you _say_ this? What-"

"I'm not - he didn't hurt me. I'm not - I'm free to go," she croaked. She took another step down the hall and glanced at the phone, took it off speaker. She took a breath and lowered her voice to give him the all-clear code - that there was no gun to her head - the lines of poetry she'd picked out herself. Like a joke. But this wasn't a joke. "The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story. Lord Tennyson."

"Kate," he moaned. "No. No."

"It was just supposed to be me. I came for the regimen but he won't give it to me without you here. I'm so sorry."

"Kate."

She turned her face into the wall, pressed her forehead against its smooth, cold surface. "Please don't leave me," she got out, tears pushing at the back of her eyelids. "Please come."

"I'd never-" Whatever he'd meant to say was cut off in a curse. The unsaid pierced her to the core. She pressed her skull harder into the wall to keep from shaking.

He growled at her from a thousand miles distant. "Why would you do this? Are you _trying_ to kill yourself? Do you want to kill me too? If he _touches you-_"

"No," she groaned. "No, please don't - you need the regimen. And he has it. You have to come, Castle."

"God damn you," he choked out.

And then he hung up.

"Very good, Kate." She felt the touch at her shoulder as Black reached past her for the phone, the slide of his fingers under hers as he took it from her.

She gulped in deep breaths, her eyes closed, but he was turning her around.

"It's nearly lunch. I suggest you eat or I don't think my son will be very happy with you."

Kate groaned and pressed her hand to her eyes, her jaw and cheek aching, the bullet graze just at her ear making itself known.

"Oh, that's right," Black said. "He's already not very happy with you. Let's hope you're right about him, though. Let's hope he really will come for you. Even after you did this."

She bit on the inside of her bottom lip and used the fresh pain to straighten her spine. She turned to Black and forced herself to breathe normally, act normally, not let him win.

She did know. Castle would come. That's what killed her.

"He'll be here," she said stiffly. And then she walked off down the hall at a faster pace than she knew he could keep up with, heading where she didn't even know.

Food, yes, fine. And then? No idea. She had no idea what happened next.

She hadn't really thought this far.

Castle was never going to forgive her.

* * *

So ends** Close Encounters 13: Quantum of Solace. **Stay tuned for** Close Encounters 14: A View To a Kill**


End file.
